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THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 



THE 

iIAMONB NECKLACE 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

I9J3 






<?• <«»«- 



X tJ iifS 



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NOTE 

" I have also, with an effort, accomplished the 
projected piece on the Diamond Necklace. It 
was finished this day week; really a queer kind 
of thing, of some forty and odd pages. Jane at 
first thought we should print it at our own 
charges, set our name on it, and send it out in 
God's name. Neither she nor I are now so sure 
of it, but will consider it. My attempt was to 
make reality ideal; there is considerable signifi- 
cance in that notion of mine, and I have not yet 
seen the limit of it, nor shall till I have tried to 
go as far as it will carry me. The story of the 
Diamond Necklace is all told in that paper with 
the strictest fidelity, yet in a kind of musical 
way." 

Carlyle to his brother 
December 24, 1833. 




CONTENTS 



Chapter 


I. 


Age of Romance 


3 


Chapter 


II. 


The Necklace is Made . 


i8 


Chapter 


III. 


The Necklace cannot be Sold 


28 


Chapter 


IV. 


Affinities: The Two Fixed- 








Ideas 


32 


Chapter 


V. 


The Artist .... 


57 


Chapter 


VI. 


Will the Two Fixed-Ideas 








Unite ? 


70 


Chapter 


VII. 


Marie-Antoinette . 


80 


Chapter VIII. 


The Two Fixed-Ideas will 








Unite 


87 


Chapter 


IX. 


Park of Versailles . 


96 


Chapter 


X. 


Behind the Scenes . . . 


104 


Chapter 


XI. 


The Necklace is Sold 


1 10 


Chapter 


XII. 


The Necklace Vanishes . 


119 



<%t viii ^ 
Chapter XIII. Scene Third: By Dame de La- 

MOTTE 123 

Chapter XIV. The Necklace cannot be Paid 129 

Chapter XV. Scene Fourth: By Destiny . 141 

Chapter Last. Missa Est . . . . • 145 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 




THE 

DIAMOND NECKLACE 

CHAPTER I 

AGE OF ROMANCE 

THE Age of Romance has not ceased; 
it never ceases ; it does not, if we will 
think of it, so much as very sensibly de- 
cline. " The passions are repressed by social 
, forms ; great passions no longer show them- 
selves ? " Why, there are passions still great 
enough to replenish Bedlam, for it never 
wants tenants; to suspend men from bed- 
posts, from improved-drops at the west end 
of Newgate. A passion that explosively 
shivers asunder the Life it took rise in, 
ought to be regarded as considerable : more 



'¥ 4 '^ 
no passion, in the highest heyday of Ro- 
mance, yet did. The passions, by grace of 
the Supernal and also of the Infernal Pow- 
ers (for both have a hand in it), can never 
fail us. 

And then, as to "social forms," be it 
granted that they are of the most buckram 
quahty, and bind men up into the pitiful- 
est, straitlaced, commonplace existence, — 
you ask. Where is the Romance? In the 
Scotch way one answers. Where is it not? 
That very spectacle of an Immortal Nature, 
with faculties and destiny extending through 
Eternity, hampered and bandaged up, by 
nurses, pedagogues, posture-masters, and 
the tongues of innumerable old women 
(named " force of public opinion") ; by pre- 
judice, custom, want of knowledge, want 
of money, want of strength, into, say, the 
meagre Pattern-Figure that, in these days, 
meets you in all thoroughfares: a "god- 
created Man," all but abnegating the char- 
acter of Man ; forced to exist, automatised, 



4^ 5 ^ 

mummy-wise (scarcely in rare moments 
audible or visible from amid his wrappages 
and cerements), as Gentleman or Gigman; 
and so selling his birthright of Eternity for 
the three daily meals, poor at best, which 
Time yields: — is not this spectacle itself 
highly romantic, tragical, if we had eyes to 
look at it ? The highborn (highest-born, 
for he came out of Heaven) lies drowning 
in the despicablest puddles ; the priceless 
gift of Life, which he can have but once^ 
for he waited a whole Eternity to be born, 
and now has a whole Eternity waiting to see 
what he will do when born, — this priceless 
gift we see strangled slowly out of him by in- 
numerable packthreads; and there remains 
of the glorious Possibility, which we fondly 
named Man, nothing but an inanimate 
mass of foul loss and disappointment, which 
we wrap in shrouds and bury underground, 
— surely with well-merited tears. To the 
Thinker here lies Tragedy enough ; the epi- 
tomeandmarrowof all Tragedy whatsoever. 



^ 6 ^ 

But so few are Thinkers ? Ay, Reader, 
so few think; there is the rub! Not one 
in the thousand has the smallest turn for 
thinking; only for passive dreaming and 
hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. 
Of the eyes that men do glare withal so few 
can see. Thus is the world become such 
a fearful confused Treadmill; and each 
man's task has got entangled in his neigh- 
bour's, and pulls it awry; and the Spirit of 
Blindness, Falsehood,and Distraction,just- 
ly named the Devil, continually maintains 
himself among us; and even hopes (were 
it not for the Opposition, which by God's 
grace will also maintain itself) to become 
supreme. Thus, too, among other things, 
has the Romance of Life gone wholly out 
of sight: and all History, degenerating into 
empty invoice-lists of Pitched Battles and 
Changes of Ministry ; or still worse, into 
"Constitutional History," or "Philosophy 
of History," or " Philosophy Teaching by 
Experience," is become dead, as the Al- 



4f 7 ^ 
manacs of other years, — to which species 
of composition, indeed, it bears, in several 
points of view, no inconsiderable affinity. 
"Ofall blinds that shut-up men's vision," 
says one, "the worst is Self." How true! 
How doubly true, if Self, assuming her cun- 
ningest, yet miserablest disguise, come on 
us, in never-ceasing, all-obscuring reflexes 
from the innumerable Selves of others; not 
as Pride, not even as real Hunger, but only 
as Vanity, and the shadow of an imaginary 
Hunger for Applause ; under the name of 
what we call " Respectability " ! Alas now 
for our Historian: to his other spiritual 
deadness (which, however, so long as he 
physically breathes, cannot be considered 
complete) this sad new magic influence is 
added ! Henceforth his Histories must all 
be screwed up into the " dignity of His- 
tory." Instead of looking fixedly at the 
Things and first of all, and beyond all, en- 
deavouring to see it, and fashion a living 
Picture of it, not a wretched politico-meta- 



physical Abstraction of it, he has now quite 
other matters to look to. The Thing lies 
shrouded, invisible. In thousandfold hallu- 
cinations, and foreign air-images: What did 
the Whigs say of it? What did the Tories? 
The Priests ? The Freethinkers ? Above all, 
What will my own listening circle say of me 
for what I say of it ? And then his Respect- 
ability In general, as a literary gentleman; 
his not despicable talent for philosophy! 
Thus is our poor Historian's faculty di- 
rected mainly on two objects: the Writing 
and the Writer, both of which are quite ex- 
traneous ; and the Thing written-of fares as 
we see. Can it be wonderful that Histories, 
wherein open lying is not permitted, are 
unromantic? Nay, our very Biographies, 
how stiff-starched, folsonless, hollow ! They 
stand there respectable ; and — what more ? 
Dumb Idols; with a skin of delusively 
painted wax-work ; inwardly empty, or full 
of rags and bran. In our England espe- 
cially, which In these days is become the 



4f 9 ^ 
chosen land of Respectability, Life-writing 
has dwindled to the sorrowfullest condi- 
tion; it requires a man to be some disre- 
spectable, ridiculous Boswell before he can 
write a tolerable Life. Thus, too, strangely 
enough, the only Lives worth reading are 
those of Players, emptiest and poorest of 
the sons of Adam ; who nevertheless were 
sons of his, and brothers of ours ; and by 
the nature of the case, had already bidden 
Respectability good-day. Such bounties, 
in this as in infinitely deeper matters, does 
Respectability shower down on us. Sad are 
thy doings, O Gig; sadder than those of 
Juggernaut's Car : that, with huge wheel, 
suddenly crushes asunder the bodies of 
men ; thou in thy light-bobbing Long- Acre 
springs, gradually winnowest away their 
souls ! 

Depend upon it, for one thing, good 
Reader, no age ever seemed the Age of Ro- 
mance to itself. Charlemagne, let the Poets 
talk as they will, had his own provocations 



-^ lO ^ 

in the world : what with selling of his poul- 
try and pot-herbs, what with wanton daugh- 
ters carrying secretaries through the snow ; 
and, for instance, that hanging of the Sax- 
ons over the Weserbridge (four thousand 
of them, they say, at one bout), it seems 
to me that the Great Charles had his temper 
ruffled at times. Roland of Roncesvalles, 
too, we see well in thinking of it, found 
rainy weather as well as sunny ; knew what 
it was to have hose need darning ; got tough 
beef to chew, or even went dinnerless ; was 
saddle-sick, calumniated, constipated (as 
his madness too clearly indicates) ; and 
oftenest felt, I doubt not, that this was a 
very Devil's world, and he, Roland him- 
self, one of the sorriest caitijEFs there. Only 
in long subsequent days, when the tough 
beef, the constipation, and the calumny 
had clean vanished, did it all begin to seem 
Romantic, and your Turpins and Ariostos 
found music in it. So, I say, is it ever! 
And the more, as your true hero, your true 



-^ II «§► 

Roland, is ever unconscious that he is a hero : 
this is a condition of all greatness. 

In our own poor Nineteenth Century, 
the Writer of these lines has been fortunate 
enough to see not a few glimpses of Ro- 
mance ; he imagines his Nineteenth is hardly 
a whit less romantic than that Ninth, or any 
other since centuries began. Apart from 
Napoleon, and the Dantons, and the Mira- 
beaus, whose fire-words of public speaking, 
and fire-whirlwinds of cannon andmusketry, 
which for a season darkened the air, are per- 
haps at bottom but superficial phenomena, 
he has witnessed, in remotest places, much 
that could be called romantic, even mirac- 
ulous. He has witnessed overhead the in- 
finite Deep, with greater and lesser lights, 
bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth 
by the Hand of God : around him and under 
his feet, the wonderfullest Earth, with her 
winter snow-storms and her summer spice- 
airs ; and, unaccountablest of all, himself 
standing there. He stood in a lapse of Time ; 



-^ 12 ^ 

he saw Eternity behind him, and before him. 
The all-encircling mysterious tide of Force, 
thousandfold (for from force of Thought 
to force of Gravitation what an interval!) 
billowed shoreless on ; bore him too along 
with it, — he too was part of it. From its 
bosom rose and vanished, in perpetual 
change, the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory, 
which men name Being; and ever anew rose 
and vanished ; and ever that lordliest many- 
coloured scene was full, another yet the 
same. Oak-trees fell, young acorns sprang; 
Men too, new-sent from the Unknown, he 
met, of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, 
into strength of sinew, passionate fire and 
light: in other men the light was grow- 
ing dim, the sinews all feeble; then sank, 
motionless, into ashes, into invisibility; re- 
turned ^ack to the Unknown, beckoning 
him their mute farewell. He wanders still 
by the parting-spot ; cannot hear fhem ; they 
are far, how far ! — It was a sight for angels, 
and archangels; for, indeed, God himself 



^ 13 ^ 
had made it wholly. One many-glancing 
asbestos-thread in the Web of Universal- 
History, spirit-woven, it rustled there, as 
with the howl of mighty winds, through 
that "wild-roaring Loom of Time." Gen- 
eration after generation, hundreds of them 
or thousands of them from the unknown Be- 
ginning, so loud, so stormful-busy, rushed 
torrent-wise, thundering down, down ; and 
fell all silent, — nothing but some feeble 
reecho, which grew ever feebler, strug- 
gling up ; and Oblivion swallowed them all. 
Thousands more, to the unknown Ending, 
will follow : and thou here, of this present 
one, hangest as a drop, still sungilt, on the 
giddy edge; one moment, while the Dark- 
ness has not yet engulfed thee. O Brother ! 
is that what thou callest prosaic; of small 
interest? Of small interest and for thee? 
Awake, poor troubled sleeper: shake off 
thy torpid nightmare-dream ; look, see, be- 
hold it, the Flame-image ; splendours high 
as Heaven, terrors deep as Hell: this is 



-^ 14 ^ 
God's Creation ; this is Man's Life! — Such 
things has the Writer of these Hnes wit- 
nessed, in this poor Nineteenth Century of 
ours ; and what are all such to the things 
he yet hopes to witness? Hopes, with tru- 
est assurance. " I have painted so much," 
said the good Jean Paul, in his old days, 
"and I have never seen the Ocean; the 
Ocean of Eternity I shall not fail to see!'* 
Such being the intrinsic quality of this 
Time, and of all Time whatsoever, might 
not the Poet who chanced to walk through 
it find objects enough to paint ? What ob- 
ject soever he fixed on, were it the meanest 
of the mean, let him but paint it in its 
actual truth, as it swims there, in such envi- 
ronment; world-old, yet new and never- 
ending ; an indestructible portion of the 
miraculous All, — his picture of it were a 
Poem. How much more if the object fixed 
on were not mean, but one already wonder- 
ful ; the mystic " actual truth" of which, if 
it lay not on the surface, yet shone through 



^ 15 ^ 

the surface, and invited even Prosaists to 
search for it ! 

The present Writer, who unhappily be- 
longs to that class, has nevertheless a firmer 
and firmer persuasion of two things : first, 
as was seen, that Romance exists ; secondly, 
that now, and formerly, and evermore it 
exists, strictly speaking, in Reality alone. 
The thing that zV, what can be jo wonderful; 
what, especially to us that are^ can have 
such significance? Study Reality, he is ever 
and anon saying to himself; search out 
deeper and deeper its quite endless mys- 
tery : see it, know it ; then, whether thou 
wouldst learn from it, and again teach ; or 
weep over it, or laugh over it, or love it, or 
despise it, or in any way relate thyself to it, 
thou hast the firmest enduring basis : thai 
hieroglyphic page is one thou canst read on 
forever, find new meaning in forever. 

Finally, and in a word, do not the critics 
teach us : "In whatsoever thing thou hast 
thyself felt interest, in that or in nothing 



^ i6 ^ 

hope to inspire others with interest " ? — In 
partial obedience to all which, and to many 
other principles, shall the following small 
Romance o( th^ Diamond Necklace begin to 
come together. A small Romance, let the 
reader again and again assure himself, which 
is no brainweb of mine, or of any other fool- 
ish man's ; but a fraction of that mystic 
" spirit-woven web," from the " Loom of 
Time," spoken of above. It is an actual 
Transaction that happened in this Earth 
of ours. Wherewith our whole business, as 
already urged, is to paint it truly. 

For the rest, an earnest inspection, faith- 
ful endeavour has not been wanting, on our 
part ; nor, singular as it may seem, the strict- 
est regard to chronology, geography (or 
rather, in this case, topography), document- 
ary evidence, and what else true historical 
research would yield. Were there but on 
the reader's part a kindred openness, a kin- 
dred spirit of endeavour! Beshone strongly, 
on both sides, by such united twofold Phi- 



^ I? ^ 

losophy, this poor opaque Intrigue of the 
Z^/^/wow^iW^i^Az^:^ might become quite trans- 
lucent between us, transfigured, lifted up 
into the serene of Universal-History; and 
might hang there like a smallest Diamond 
Constellation, visible without telescope, — 
so long as it could. 




CHAPTER II 

THE NECKLACE IS MADE 

EERR, or as he is now called Monsieur, 
Boehmer, to all appearance wanted 
not that last infirmity of noble and ignoble 
minds — a love of fame ; he was destined 
also to be famous more than enough. His 
outlooks into the world were rather of a 
smiling character ; he has long since ex- 
changed his guttural speech, as far as pos- 
sible, for a nasal one ; his rustic Saxon 
fatherland for a polished city of Paris, and 
thriven there. United in partnership with 
worthy Monsieur Bassange, a sound prac- 
tical man, skilled in the valuation of all 
precious stones, in the management of 
workmen, in the judgment of their work, 
he already sees himself among the highest 
of his guild : nay, rather the very highest, 
— for he has secured, by purchase and hard 



4t 19 ^ 
money paid, the title of King's Jeweller ; 
and can enter the Court itself, leaving all 
other Jewellers, and even innumerable 
Gentlemen, Gigmen, and small Nobility, 
to languish in the vestibule. With the cost- 
liest ornaments in his pocket, or borne after 
him by assiduous shopboys, the happy 
Boehmer sees high drawing-rooms and sa- 
cred ruelles fly open, as with talismanic 
Sesame; and the brightest eyes of the whole 
world grow brighter : to him alone of men 
the Unapproachable reveals herself in mys- 
terious negligee; taking and giving counsel. 
Do not, on all gala-days and gala-nights, 
his works praise him ? On the gorgeous 
robes of State, on Court-dresses and Lords* 
stars, on the diadem of Royalty: better 
still, on the swan-neck of Beauty, and her 
queenly garniture from plume-bearing ai- 
grette to shoe-buckle on fairy-slipper, — 
that blinding play of colours is Boehmer's 
doing : he is Joaillier-Bijoutier de la Reine. 
Could the man have been content with it ! 



He could not : Icarus-like, he must mount 
too high; have his wax-wings melted, and 
descend prostrate, — amid a cloud of vain 
goose-quills. One day, a fatal day (of some 
year, probably among the Seventies of last 
Century), it struck Boehmer: Why should 
not I, who as Most Christian King's Jewel- 
ler, am properly first Jeweller of the Uni- 
verse, — make a Jewel which the Universe 
has not matched ? Nothing can prevent thee, 
Boehmer, if thou have the skill to do it. 
Skill or no skill, answers he, I have the am- 
bition: my Jewel, if not the beautifullest, 
shall be the dearest. Thus was the Diamond 
Necklace determined on. 

Did worthy Bassange give a willing, or a 
reluctant consent? In any case he consents ; 
and cooperates. Plans are sketched, con- 
sultations held, stucco models made; by 
money or credit the costliest diamonds come 
in ; cunning craftsmen cut them, set them : 
proud Boehmer sees the work go prosper- 
ously on. Proud man! Behold him on a 



<%t 21 ^ 

morning after breakfast: he has stepped 
down to the innermost workshop, before sal- 
lying out; stands there with his laced three- 
cornered hatj cane under arm ; drawing-on 
his gloves: with nod, with nasal-guttural 
word, he gives judicious confirmation, judi- 
cious abnegation, censure, and approval. A 
still joy is dawning over that bland, blond 
face of his; he can think, while in many a 
sacred boudoir he visits the Unapproach- 
able, that an opus magnumy of which the 
world wotteth not, is progressing. At length 
comes a morning when care has terminated, 
and joy can not only dawn but shine; the 
Necklace, which shall be famous and world- 
famous, is made. 

Made we call it, in conformity with com- 
mon speech, but properly it was not made; 
only, with more or less spirit of method, 
arranged and agglomerated. What spirit of 
method lay in it, might be made ; nothing 
more. But to tell the various Histories of 
those various Diamonds from the first mak- 



^ 11 ^ 

ing of them ; or even, omitting all the rest, 
from the first digging of them in the far In- 
dian mines! How they lay, for uncounted 
ages and aeons (under the uproar and splash- 
ing of such Deucalion Deluges, and Hutton 
Explosions, with steam enough,and Werner 
Submersions), silently embedded in the 
rock; did nevertheless, when their hour 
came, emerge from it, and first behold the 
glorious Sun smile on them, and with their 
many-coloured glances smile back on him. 
How they served next, let us say, as eyes 
of Heathen Idols, and received worship. 
How they had then, by fortune of war or 
theft, been knocked out; and exchanged 
among camp-sutlers for a little spirituous 
liquor, and bought' by Jews, and worn as 
signets on the fingers of tawny or white 
Majesties; and again been lost, with the 
fingers too, and perhaps life (as by Charles 
the Rash, among the mud-ditches of Nan- 
cy), in old-forgotten glorious victories: and 
so, — through innumerable varieties of for- 



^ 23 ^ 

tune, — had come at last to the cutting- 
wheel of Boehmer; to be united, in strange 
fellowship, with comrades also blown to- 
gether from all ends of the Earth, each with 
a history of its own ! Could these aged stones, 
the youngest of them Six Thousand years 
of age and upwards, but have spoken, there 
were an Experience of Philosophy to teach 
by ! — But now, as was said, by little caps of 
gold, and daintiest rings of the same, they 
are all being, so to speak, enlisted under 
Boehmer's flag, — made to take rank and 
file, in new order, no Jewel asking his neigh- 
bour whence he came; and parade there for 
a season. For a season only; and then — to 
disperse, and enlist anew ad infinitum. In 
such inexplicable wise are Jewels, and men 
also, and indeed all earthly things, jumbled 
together and asunder, and shovelled and 
wafted to and fro, in our inexplicable chaos 
of a World. This was what Boehm.er called 
making his Necklace. 

So, in fact, do other men speak, and with 



^ 24 ^ 

even less reason. How many men, for 
example, hast thou heard talk of making 
money ; of making, say, a million and a half 
of money : Of which million and a half, how 
much, if one were to look into it, had they 
made? The accurate value of their Indus- 
try ; not a sixpence more. Their making, 
then, was but, like Boehmer's, a clutching 
and heaping together ; — by-and-by to be 
followed also by a dispersion. Made ? Thou 
too vain individual ! were these towered 
ashlar edifices ; were these fair bounteous 
leas, with their bosky umbrages and yel- 
low harvests ; and the sunshine that lights 
them from above, and the granite rocks 
and fire-reservoirs that support them from 
below, made by thee? I think, by another. 
The very shilling that thou hast was dug, 
by man's force, in Carinthia and Paraguay ; 
smelted sufficiently ; and stamped, as would 
seem, not without the advice of our late De- 
fender of the Faith, his Majesty George 
the Fourth. Thou hast it, and boldest it ; 



^ 2S ^ 

but whether, or in what sense, thou hast 
made any farthing of it, thyself canst not say. 
If the courteous reader ask, What things, 
then, are made by man ? I will answer him. 
Very feWy indeed. A Heroism, a Wisdom 
(a god-given Volition that has realized it- 
self), is made now and then : for example, 
some five or six Books, since the Creation, 
have been made. Strange that there are not 
more : for surely every encouragement is 
held out. Could I, or thou, happy reader, 
but make one, the world would let us keep 
itunstolen for Fourteen whole years, — and 
take what we could get for it. 

But, in a word. Monsieur Boehmer has 
made his Necklace, what he calls made 
it : happy man is he. From a Drawing, as 
large as reality, kindly furnished by "Tau- 
nay, Printseller, of the Rue d'Enfer " ; and 
again, in late years, by the Abbe Georgel, 
in the Second Volume of his " Memoires" 
curious readers can still fancy to themselves 
what a princely Ornament it was. A row 



^ 26 ^ 

of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large 
almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, 
the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully 
fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed 
festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear- 
shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering 
amorphous) encircle it, enwreath it, a sec- 
ond time. Loosest of all, softly flowing 
round from behind in priceless catenary, 
rush down two broad threefold rows ; seem 
to knot themselves, round a very Queen of 
Diamonds, on the bosom ; then rush on, 
again separated, as if there were length in 
plenty ; the very tassels of them were a for- 
tune for some men. And now lastly, two 
other inexpressible threefold rov»^s, also with 
their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on 
and clasped, unite themselves behind into 
a doubly inexpressible jz-vfold row ; and so 
stream down, together or asunder, over the 
hind-neck, — we may fancy, like lambent 
Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire. 

All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged 



4t 27 ^ 
with rose-bloom, and within it royal Life : 
amidst the blaze of lustres; in sy Iphish move- 
ments, espiegleries, coquetteries, and min- 
uet-mazes; with every movement a flash 
of star-rainbow colours, bright almost as 
the movements of the fair young soul it 
emblems! A glorious ornament; fit only 
for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, 
only attainable by such ; for it is valued at 
1,800,000 livres; say in round numbers, 
and sterling money, between eighty and 
ninety thousand pounds. 




CHAPTER III 

THE NECKLACE CANNOT BE SOLD 

ISCALCULATING Boehmer. 
JL V JL The Sultana of the Earth shall never 
wear that Necklace of thine ; no neck, either 
royal or vassal, shall ever be the lovelier for 
it. In the present distressed state of our 
finances, with the American War raging 
round us, where thinkest thou are eighty 
thousand pounds to be raised for such a 
thing? In this hungry world, thou fool, 
these five hundred and odd Diamonds, 
good only for looking at, are intrinsically 
worth less to us than a string of as many dry 
Irish potatoes, on which a famishing Sans- 
culotte might fill his belly. Little knowest 
thou, laughing Joaillier-Bijoutier, great in 
thy pride of place, in thy pride of savoir- 
faire^ what the world has in store for thee. 
Thou laughest there; by-and-by thou 



4^ 29 ^ 

wilt laugh on the wrong side of thy face 
mainly. 

While the Necklace lay in stucco efRgy, 
and the stones of it were still "circulating 
in Commerce," Du Barry's was the neck 
it was meant for. Unhappily, as all dogs, 
male and female, have but their day, her 
day is done; and now (so busy has Death 
been) she sits retired, on mere half-pay, 
without prospects, at Saint-Cyr. A generous 
France will buy no more neck-ornaments 
for her: — O Heaven! the Guillotine-axe 
is already forging (North, in Swedish Dale- 
carlia, by sledge-hammers and fire; South, 
too, by taxes and tailles) that will shear her 
neck in twain ! 

But, Indeed, what of Du Barry? A foul 
worm ; hatched by royal heat, on foul com- 
posts, into a flaunting butterfly; now dis- 
winged, and again a worm! Are there not 
Kings' Daughters and Kings' Consorts; is 
not Decoration the first wish of a female 
heart, — often also, if such heart is empty, 



^ 3^ ^ 
the last? The Portuguese Ambassador is 
here, and his rigorous Pombal is no longer 
Minister: there is an Infanta in Portugal, 
purposing by Heaven's blessing to wed. 
— Singular! the Portuguese Ambassador, 
though without fear of Pombal, praises, but 
will not purchase. 

Or why not our own loveliest Marie-An- 
toinette, once Dauphiness only; now every 
inch a Queen : what neck in the whole Earth 
would it beseem better? It is fit only for 
her. — Alas, Boehmer! King Louis has an 
eye for diamonds; but he, too, is without 
overplus of money : his high Queen herself 
answers queenlike, " We have more need 
of Seventy-fours than of Necklaces. "X^«- 
t^a^ur et alget I — Not without a qualmish 
feeling, we apply next to the Queen and 
King of the Two Sicilies. In vain, O Boeh- 
mer! In crowned heads there is no hope 
for thee. Not a crowned head of them can 
spare the eighty thousand pounds. The age 
of Chivalry is gone, and that of Bankruptcy 



^ 31 ^ 
is come. A dull, deep, presaging movement 
rocks all thrones: Bankruptcy is beating 
down the gate, and no Chancellor can longer 
barricade her out. She will enter; and the 
shoreless fire-lava of Democracy is at her 
back! Well may Kings, a second time, 
"sit still with awful eye," and think of far 
other things than Necklaces. 

Thus for poor Boehmer are the mourn- 
fullest days and nights appointed ; and this 
high-promising year (1780, as we labori- 
ously guess and gather) stands blacker than 
all others in his calendar. In vain shall he, 
on his sleepless pillow, more and more des- 
perately revolve the problem ; it is a prob- 
lem of the insoluble sort, a true "irreducible 
case of Cardan": the Diamond Necklace 
will not sell. 




CHAPTER IV 

affinities: the two fixed-ideas 

NEVERTHELESS, a man's little 
Work lies not isolated, stranded; a 
whole busy W^orld, a whole native-element 
of mysterious never-resting Force, environs 
it ; will catch it up ; will carry it forward, or 
else backward : always, infallibly, either as 
living growth, or at worst as well-rotted 
manure, the Thing Done will come to use. 
Often, accordingly, for a man that had fin- 
ished any little work, this were the most 
interesting question In such a boundless 
whirl of a world, what hook will it be, and 
what hooks, that shall catch up this little 
work of mine; and whirl // also, — through 
such a dance ? A question, we need not say, 
which, in the simplest of cases, would bring 
the whole Royal Society to a non-plus. — 
Good Corsican Letitia ! while thou nursest 



^ 33 '^ 
thy little Napoleon, and he answers thy 
mother-smile with those deep eyes of his, 
a world-famous French Revolution, with 
Federations of the Champ de Mars, and 
September Massacres, and Bakers' Cus- 
tomers en queue^ is getting ready : many a 
Danton and Desmoulins ; prim-visaged, 
TartufFe-looking Robespierre, as yet all 
schoolboys ; and Marat weeping bitter 
rheum, as he pounds horse-drugs, — are 
preparing the fittest arena for him ! 

Thus, too, while poor Boehmer is busy 
with those Diamonds- of his, picking them 
"out of Commerce," and his craftsmen are 
grinding and setting them ; a certain ecclesi- 
astical Coadjutor and Grand Almoner, and 
prospective Commendator and Cardinal, is 
in Austria, hunting and giving suppers ; for 
whom mainly it is that Boehmer and his 
craftsmen so employ themselves. Strange 
enough, once more ! The foolish Jeweller at 
Paris, making foolish trinkets ; the foolish 
Ambassador at Vienna, making blunders 



^ 34 ^ 
and debaucheries: these Two, all uncom- 
municating, wide asunder as the Poles, are 
hourly forging for each other the won- 
derfullest hook-and-eye ; which will hook 
them together, one day, — into artificial 
Siamese-Twins, for the astonishment of 
mankind. 

Prince Louis de Rohan is one of those se- 
lect mortals born to honours, as the sparks 
fly upwards ; and, alas, also (as all men are) 
to troubles no less. Of his genesis and de- 
scent much might be said, by the curious 
in such matters; yet, perhaps, if we weigh 
it well, intrinsically little. He can, by dili- 
gence and faith, be traced back some hand- 
breadth or two, some century or two ; but 
after that, merges in the mere "blood-royal 
of Brittany "; long, long on this side of the 
Northern Immigrations, he is not so much 
as to be sought for; — and leaves the whole 
space onwards from that, into the bosom of 
Eternity, a blank, marked only by one point, 
the Fall of Man ! However, and what alone 



concerns us, his kindred, in tliese quite re- 
cent times, have been much about the Most 
Christian Majesty ; could there pick up what 
was going. In particular, they have had a 
turn of some continuance for Cardinalship 
and Commendatorship. Safest trades these, 
of the calm, do-nothing sort: in the do- 
something line, in Generalship, or such like 
(witness poor Cousin Soubise,at Rosbach), 
they might not fare so well. In any case, 
the actual Prince Louis, Coadjutor at Stras- 
burg, while his uncle the Cardinal-Arch- 
bishop has not yet deceased, and left him 
his dignities, but only fallen sick, already 
takes his place on one grandest occasion : 
he, thrice-happy Coadjutor, receives the fair, 
young, trembling Dauphiness, Marie-An- 
toinette, on her first entrance into France ; 
and can there, as Ceremonial Fugleman, 
with fit bearing and semblance (being a tall 
man, of six-and-thirty), do the needful. 
Of his other performances up to this date, 
a refined History had rather say nothing. 



■^ 36 ^ 
In fact, if the tolerating mind will medi- 
tate it with any sympathy, what could poor 
Rohan perform? Performing needs light, 
needs strength, and a firm clear footing ; 
all of which had been denied him. Nour- 
ished, from birth, with the choicest physical 
spoon-meat, indeed ; yet also, with no better 
spiritual Doctrine and Evangel of Life than 
a French Court of Louis the Well-beloved 
could yield ; gifted, moreover, and this too 
was but a new perplexity for him, with 
shrewdness enough to see through much, 
with vigour enough to despise much ; un- 
happily, not with vigour enough to spurn 
it from him, and be forever enfranchised 
of it, — he awakes, at man's stature, with 
man's wild desires, in a World of the merest 
incoherent Lies and Delirium; himself a 
nameless Mass of delirious Incoherences, 
— covered over at most, and held in little, 
by conventional Politesse, and a Cloak of 
prospective Cardinal's Plush. Are not in- 
trigues^ might Rohan say, the industry of 



^ 37 ^ 
this our Universe ; nay, is not the Universe 
itself, at bottom, properly an intrigue ? A 
Most Christian Majesty, in the Parc-aux- 
cerfs; he, thou seest, is the god of this 
lower world ; in the fight of Life, our war- 
banner and celestial En-touto-nika is a 
Strumpet's Petticoat : these are thy gods, 
O France ! — What, in such singular cir- 
cumstances, could poor Rohan's creed and 
world-theory be, that he should " perform " 
thereby ? Atheism ? Alas, no ; not even 
Atheism : only Machiavellism ; and the in- 
destructible faith that "ginger is hot in the 
mouth." Get ever new and better gingery 
therefore ; chew it ever the more diligently : 
*t is all thou hast to look to, and that only 
for a day. 

Ginger enough, poor Louis de Rohan : 
too much of ginger ! Whatsoever of it, for 
the five senses, money, or money's worth, 
or backstairs diplomacy, can buy; nay, for 
the sixth sense, too, the far spicier ginger, 
Antecedence of thy fellow-creatures, — 



4^ 38 ^ 
merited, at least, by infinitely finer hous- 
ing than theirs. Coadjutor of Strasburg, 
Archbishop of Strasburg, Grand Almoner 
of France, Commander of the Order of the 
Holy Ghost, Cardinal Commendator of St. 
Wast d' Arras (one of the fattest benefices 
here below) : all these shall be housings for 
Monseigneur : to all these shall his Jesuit 
Nursing-mother, our vulpine Abbe Geor- 
gel, through fair court-weather and through 
foul, triumphantly bear him ; and wrap him 
with them, fat, somnolent Nursling as he 
is. — By the way, a most assiduous, ever- 
wakeful Abbe is this Georgel ; and wholly 
Monseigneur's. He has scouts dim-flying, 
far out, in the great deep of the world's 
business ; has spider-threads that overnet 
the whole world; himself sits in'the centre, 
ready to run. In vain shall King and Queen 
combine against Monseigneur: "I was at 
M. de Maurepas' pillow before six," — per- 
suasively wagging my sleek coif, and the 
sleek reynard-head under it ; I managed it 



^ 39 ^ 
all for him. Here, too, on occasion of Rey- 
nard George], we could not but reflect what 
a singular species of creature your Jesuit 
must have been. Outwardly, you would 
say, a man ; the smooth semblance of a 
man : Inwardly, to the centre, filled with 
stone ! Yet in all breathing things, even In 
stone Jesuits, are Inscrutable sympathies : 
how else does a Reynard Abbe so loyally 
give himself, soul and body, to a somno- 
lent Monseigneur ; — how else does the 
poor Tit, to the neglect of Its own eggs 
and interests, nurse up a huge lumbering 
Cuckoo; and think Its pains all paid. If the 
soot-brown Stupidity will merely grow big- 
ger and bigger ! — Enough, by Jesuitic or 
other means. Prince Louis de Rohan shall 
be passively kneaded and baked Into Com- 
mendator of St. Wast and much else; and 
truly such a Commendator as hardly, since 
King Thierri, first of the FaineanSy founded 
that Establishment, has played his part 
there. 



Such, however, have Nature and Art 
combined together to make Prince Louis. 
A figure thrice-clothed with honours ; with 
plush, and civic and ecclesiastic garniture 
of all kinds; but in itself little other than 
an amorphous congeries of contradictions, 
somnolence and violence, foul passions and 
foul habits. It is by his plush cloaks and 
wrappages mainly, as above hinted, that 
such a figure sticks together : what we call 
" coheres," in any measure ; were it not for 
these, he would flow out boundlessly on all 
sides. Conceive him farther, with a kind 
of radical vigour and fire, for he can see 
clearly at times, and speak fiercely ; yet left 
in this way to stagnate and ferment, and lie 
overlaid with such floods of fat material : 
have we not a true image of the shame- 
fullest Mud-volcano, gurgling and slut- 
tishly simmering, amid continual steamy 
indistinctness, — except as was hinted, in 
w'md-gusts ; with occasional terrifico-absurd 
mud-explosions ! 



4f 41 ^ 

This, garnish it and fringe it never so 
handsomely, is, alas, the intrinsic character 
of Prince Louis. A shameful spectacle: 
such, however, as the world has beheld 
many times ; as it were to be wished, but 
is not yet to be hoped, the world might 
behold no more. Nay, are not all possible 
delirious incoherences, outward and inward, 
summed up, for poor Rohan, in this one 
incrediblest incoherence, that he^ Prince 
Louis de Rohan, is named Priest, Cardinal 
of the Church ? A debauched, merely li- 
bidinous mortal, lying there quite helpless, 
^/jsolute (as we well say); whom to see 
Church Cardinal^ symbolical Hinge or main 
Corner of the Invisible Holy in this World, 
an Inhabitant of Saturn might split with 
laughing, — if he did not rather swoon with 
pity and horror ! 

Prince Louis, as ceremonial fugleman at 
Strasburg, might have hoped to make some 
way with the fair young Dauphiness; but 
seems not to have made any. Perhaps, in 



those great days, so trying for a fifteen-years 
Bride and Dauphiness, the fair Antoinette 
was too preoccupied : perhaps, in the very 
face and looks of Prospective-Cardinal 
Prince Louis, her fair young soul read, all 
unconsciously, an incoherenti?(?«^-ism, bot- 
tomless Mud-volcanoism ; from which she 
by instinct rather recoiled. 

However, as above hinted, he is now 
gone, in these years, on Embassy to Vienna: 
with " four-and-twenty pages" (if our re- 
membrance of Abbe Georgel serve) " of 
noble birth," all in scarlet breeches ; and 
such a retinue and parade as drowns even 
his fat revenue in perennial debt. Above 
all things, his Jesuit Familiar is with him. 
For so everywhere they must manage: Emi- 
nence Rohan is the cloak, Jesuit Georgel 
the man or automaton within it. Rohan, in- 
deed, sees Poland a-partitioning; or rather 
Georgel, with his "masked Austrian" trai- 
tor " on the ramparts," sees It for him : but 



^ 43 ^ 
what can he do? He exhibits his four- 
and-twenty scarlet pages, — who, we find, 
"smuggle" to quite unconscionable lengths; 
rides through a Catholic procession, Pro- 
spective-Cardinal though he be, because 
it is too long and keeps him from an ap- 
pointment; hunts, gallants ; gives suppers, 
Sardanapalus-wise, the finest ever seen 
in Vienna. Abbe Georgel, as we fancy it 
was, writes a Despatch in his name " every 
fortnight"; — mentions, in one of these, 
that " Maria Theresa stands, indeed, with 
the handkerchief in one hand, weeping for 
the woes of Poland; but with the sword in 
the other hand, ready to cut Poland in sec- 
tions, and take her share." Untimely joke ; 
which proved to Prince Louis the root of 
unspeakable chagrins ! For Minister D'Ai- 
guillon (much against his duty) communi- 
cates the Letter to King Louis; Louis to 
Du Barry, to season her souper, and laughs 
over it; the thing becomes a Court joke; 
the filially-pious Dauphiness hears it, and 



^ 44 ^ 
remembers it. Accounts go, moreover, that 
Rohan spake censuringly of the Dauphin- 
ess to her mother: this probably is but hear- 
say and false ; the devout Maria Theresa 
disHked him, and even despised him, and 
vigorously laboured for his recall. 

Thus, in rosy sleep and somnambulism, 
or awake only to quaff the full wine-cup of 
the Scarlet Woman his Mother, and again 
sleep and somnambulate, does the Prospect- 
ive-Cardinal and Commendator pass his 
days. Unhappy man ! This is not a world 
which was made in sleep ; which it is safe to 
sleep and somnambulate in. In that " loud- 
roaring Loom of Time" (where above nine 
hundred millions of hungry Men, for one 
item, restlessly weave and work), so many 
threads fly humming from their " eternal 
spindles"; and swift invisible shuttles, far 
darting, to the Ends of the World, — com- 
plex enough ! At this hour, a miserable 
Boehmer in Paris, whom thou wottest not 
of, is spinning, of diamonds and gold, a 



4^ 45 ^ 
paltry thrum that will go nigh to strangle 
the life out of thee. 

Meanwhile, Louis the Well-beloved has 
left, forever, his Parc-aux-cerfs ; and, amid 
the scarce-suppressed hootings of the world, 
taken up his last lodging at Saint-Denis. 
Feeling that it was all over (for the small- 
pox has the victory, and even Du Barry is 
off), he, as the Abbe Georgel records, " made 
the amende honorable to God" (these are his 
Reverence's own words); had a true repent- 
ance of three days' standing; and so, con- 
tinues the Abbe, "fell asleep in the Lord." 
Asleep in the Lord, Monsieur I'Abbe ! If 
such a mass of Laziness and Lust fell asleep 
in the Lord, who, fanciest thou, is it that 
falls asleep — elsewhere ? Enough that he 
did fall asleep ; that thick-wrapt in the 
Blanket of the Night, under what keeping 
we ask not, he never through endless Time 
can, for his own or our sins, insult the face 
of the Sun any more ; — and so now we go 



-I& 46 ^ 
onward, if not to less degrees of beastliness, 
yet, at least and worst, to cheering varieties 
of it. 

Louis XVI therefore reigns (and, under 
the Sieur Gamain, makes locks) ; his fair 
Dauphiness has become a Queen. Emi- 
nence Rohan is home from Vienna ; to con- 
dole and congratulate. He bears a letter 
from Maria Theresa ; hopes the Queen will 
not forget old Ceremonial Fuglemen, and 
friends of the Dauphiness. Heaven and 
Earth ! The Dauphiness Queen will not 
see him ; orders the Letter to be sent her. 
The King himself signifies briefly that he 
" will be asked for when wanted ! " 

Alas ! at Court, our motion is the deli- 
catest, unsurest. We go spinning, as it were, 
on teetotums, by the edges of bottomless 
deeps. Rest is fall ; so is one false whirl. A 
moment ago. Eminence Rohan seemed 
waltzing with the best: but, behold, his 
teetotum has carried him over ; there is an 
inversion of the centre of gravity ; and so 



^ 47 ^ 
now, heels uppermost, velocity increasing 
as the time, space as the square of the time, 
— he rushes. 

On a man of poor Rohan's somnolence 
and violence, the sympathising mind can 
estimate what the effect was. Consternation, 
stupefaction, the total jumble of blood, 
brains, and nervous spirits ; in ear and heart, 
only universal hubbub and louder and 
louder singing of the agitated air. A fall 
comparable to that of Satan ! Men have, 
indeed, been driven from Court ; and borne 
it, according to ability. Choiseul, in these 
very years, retired Parthianlik:e,with asmile 
or scowl ; and drew half the Court-host 
along with him. Our Wolsey, though once 
an Ego et Rex meuSy could journey, it is said, 
without strait-waistcoat, to his monastery ; 
and there, telling beads, look forward to a 
still longer journey. The melodious, too 
soft-strung Racine, when his King turned 
his back on him, emitted one meek wail, 
and submissively — died. But the case of 



^ 48 ^ 
Coadjutor de Rohan differed from all these. 
No loyalty was in him, that he should die; 
no self-help, that he should live ; no faith, 
that he should tell beads. His is a mud- 
volcanic character ; incoherent, mad, from 
the very foundation of it. Think, too, that 
his Courtiership (for how could any noble- 
ness enter there ?) was properly a gambling 
speculation : the loss of his trump Queen 
of Hearts can bring nothing but flat, un- 
redeemed despair. No other game has he, 
in this world, — or in the next. And then 
the exasperating Why? The How came it ? 
For that Rohanic, or Georgelic, sprightli- 
ness of the " handkerchief in one hand, and 
sword in the other," if, indeed, that could 
have caused it all, has quite escaped him. 
In the name of Friar Bacon's Head, what 
was it? Imagination, with Desperation to 
drive her, may fly to all points of Space ,• — 
and returns with wearied wings, and no tid- 
ings. Behold me here: this, which is the first 
grand certainty for man in general, is the 



4f 49 ^ 
first and last and only one for poor Rohan. 
And then his Here! Alas, looking upwards, 
he can eye, from his burning marl, the 
azure realms, once his ; and Cousin Coun- 
tess de Marsan, and so many Richelieus, 
Polignacs, and other happy angels, male 
and female, all blissfully gyrating there ; 

while he ! 

Nevertheless hope, in the human breast, 
though not in the diabolic, springs eternal. 
The outcast Rohan bends all his thoughts, 
faculties, prayers, purposes, to one object; 
one object he will attain, or go to Bedlam. 
How many ways he tries ; what days and 
nights of conjecture, consultation; what 
written unpublished reams of correspon- 
dence, protestation, backstairs diplomacy 
of every rubric ! How many suppers has 
he eaten ; how many given, — in vain ! It is 
his morning song, and his evening prayer. 
From innumerable falls he rises ; only to fall 
again. Behold him even, with his red stock- 
ings, at dusk, in the Garden of Trianon : 



4^ 5° ^ 
he has bribed the Concierge; will see her 
Majesty in spite of Etiquette and Fate ; 
peradventure, pitying his long sad King's- 
evil, she will touch him and heal him. In 
vain, — saysthe Female Historian,Campan. 
The Chariot of Majesty shoots rapidly by, 
with high-plumed heads in it; Eminence is 
known by his red stockings, but not looked 
at, only laughed at, and left standing like a 
Pillar of Salt. Thus through ten long years, 
of new resolve and new despondency, of 
flying from Saverneto Paris, and from Paris 
to Saverne, has it lasted; hope deferred 
making the heart sick. Reynard Georgel 
and Cousin de Marsan, by eloquence, by in- 
fluence, and being " at M. de Maurepas' 
pillow before six," have secured the Arch- 
bishopric, the Grand Almonership; the 
Cardinalship (by the medium of Poland) ; 
and,lastly, to tinker many rents, and appease 
the Jews, that fattest Commendatorship, 
founded by King Thierri the Do-nothing 
— perhaps with a view to such cases. All 



4f 51 ^ 
good! languidly croaks Rohan; yet all not 
the one thing needful ; alas, the Queen's 
eyes do not yet shine on me. 

Abbe Georgel admits, in his own polite 
diplomatic way, that the Mud-volcano was 
much agitated by these trials ; and in time 
quite changed. Monseigneur deviated into 
cabalistic courses, after elixirs, philtres, and 
the philosopher's stone ; that is, the volcanic 
steam grew thicker and heavier : at last by 
Cagliostro's magic (for Cagliostro and the 
Cardinal by elective affinity must meet), it 
sank into the opacity of perfect London 
fog ! So, too, if Monseigneur grew chol- 
eric, wrapped himself up in reserve, spoke 
roughly to his domestics and dependents, 
— were not the terrifico-absurd mud-explo- 
sions becoming more frequent ? Alas, what 
wonder ? Some nine-and-forty winters have 
now fled over his Eminence (for it is 1783), 
and his beard falls white to the shaver; 
but age for him brings no " benefit of ex- 
perience." He is possessed by a fixed-idea! 



^ 5^ ^ 
Foolish Eminence ! is the Earth grown 
all barren and of a snuff colour, because 
one pair of eyes in it look on thee askance? 
Surely thou hast thy Body there yet : and 
what of soul might from the first reside in 
it. Nay, a warm, snug Body, with not only 
five senses (sound still, in spite of much 
tear and wear), but most eminent cloth- 
ing, besides ; — clothed with authority over 
much, with red Cardinal's cloak, red Car- 
dinal's hat; with Commendatorship, Grand- 
Almonership, so kind have thy Fripiers 
been ; with dignities and dominions too te- 
dious to name. The stars rise nightly, with 
tidings (for thee too, if thou wilt listen) from 
the infinite Blue; Sun and Moon bring 
vicissitudes of season ; dressing green, with 
flower-borderings, and cloth of gold, this 
ancient ever-young Earth of ours, and fill- 
ing her breasts with all-nourishing mother's 
milk. Wilt thou work ? The whole Ency- 
clopaedia (not Diderot's only, but the Al- 
mighty's) is there for thee to spread thy 



'^ S3 "^ 
broad faculty upon. Or, if thou have no 
faculty, no Sense, hast thou not, as already 
suggested. Senses, to the number of five ? 
What victuals thou wishest, command ; 
with what wine savoureth thee, be filled. 
Already thou art a false, lascivious Priest ; 
with revenues of, say, a quarter of a million 
sterling; and no mind to mend. Eat, fool- 
ish Eminence ; eat with voracity, — leaving 
the shot till afterwards ! In all this the eyes 
of Marie-Antoinette can neither help thee 
nor hinder. 

And yet, what Is the Cardinal, dissolute 
and mud-volcano though he be, more fool- 
ish herein, than all Sons of Adam ? Give 
the wisest of us once a " fixed-idea," — 
which, though a temporary madness, who 
has not had? — and see where his wisdom 
is ! The Chamois-hunter serves his doomed 
seven years in the Quicksilver Mines ; re- 
turns salivated to the marrow of the back- 
bone ; and next morning — goes forth to 
hunt again. Behold Cardalion King of Uri- 



4fr 54 ^ 
nals ; with a woeful ballad to his mistress's 
eyebrow! He blows out, Werter- wise, his 
foolish existence, because she will not have 
it to keep ; — heeds not that there are some 
five hundred millions of other mistresses in 
this noble Planet; most likely much such 
as she. O foolish men ! They sell their In- 
heritance (as their Mother did hers), though 
it is Paradise, for a crotchet : will they not, 
in every age, dare not only grapeshot and 
gallows-ropes, but Hell-fire itself, for bet- 
ter sauce to their victuals? My friends, 
beware of fixed-ideas. 

Here, accordingly, is poor Boehmer with 
one in his head, too ! He has been hawking 
his " irreducible case of Cardan," that Neck- 
lace of his, these three long years, through 
all Palaces and Ambassadors' Hotels, over 
the old " nine Kingdoms," or more of them 
than there now are : searching, sifting Earth, 
Sea, and Air, for a customer. To take his 
Necklace in pieces ; and so, losing only his 
manual labour and expected glory, dissolve 



\> 



^ S5 1^ 
his fixed-idea, and fixed-diamonds, into 
current ones : this were simply casting out 
the Devil — from himself; a miracle, and 
perhaps more ! For he, too, has a Devil, 
or Devils : one mad object that he strives 
at ; that he, too, will attain, or go to Bed- 
lam. Creditors, snarling, hound him on 
from without; mocked Hopes, lost La- 
bours, bear-bait him from within : to these 
torments his fixed-idea keeps him chained. 
In six-and-thirty weary revolutions of the 
Moon, was it wonderful the man's brain 
had got dried a little? 

Behold, one day, being Court-Jeweller, 
he, too, bursts, almost as Rohan had done, 
into the Queen's retirement, or apartment; 
flings himself (as Campan again has re- 
corded) at her Majesty's feet; and there, 
with clasped uplifted hands, in passionate 
nasal-gutturals, with streaming tears and 
loud sobs, entreats her to do one of two 
things : Either to buy his necklace ; or 
else graciously to vouchsafe him her royal 



4t 56 ^ 
permission to drown himself in the River 
Seine. Her Majesty, pitying the distracted, 
bewildered state of the man, calmly points 
out the plain third course : D'epece-z votre 
Collier, Take your Necklace in pieces ; — 
adding withal, in a tone of queenly rebuke, 
that if he would drown himself, he at all 
times could, without her furtherance. 

Ah, had he drowned himself, with the 
Necklace in his pocket ; and Cardinal Com- 
mendator at his skirts ! Kings, above all, 
beautiful Queens, as far-radiant Symbols 
on the pinnacles of the world, are so exposed 
to madmen. Should these two fixed-ideas 
that beset this beautifuUest Queen, and al- 
most burst through her Palace-walls, one 
day unite, and this not to jump into the 
River Seine : — what maddest result may 
be looked for ! 




CHAPTER V 

THE ARTIST 

F the reader has hitherto, in our too 
figurative language, seen only the figur- 
ative hook and the figurative eye, which 
Boehmer and Rohan, far apart, were re- 
spectively fashioning for each other, he shall 
now see the cunning Milliner (an actual, 
unmetaphorical Milliner) by whom these 
two individuals, with their two implements, 
are brought in contact, and hooked to- 
gether into stupendous artificial Siamese- 
Twins ; — after which the whole nodus and 
solution will naturally combine and unfold 
itself. 

Jeanne de Saint-Remi, by courtesy or 
otherwise. Countess styled also of ValoiSy 
and even of France, has now, in this year 
of Grace 1783, known the world for some 
seven-and-twenty summers; and hadcrooks 



4t 58 ^ 
in her lot. She boasts herself descended, by 
what is called natural generd.tion, from the 
Blood-Royal of France : Henri Second, 
before that fatal tourney-lance entered his 
right eye and ended him, appears to have 
had, successively or simultaneously, four — 
unmentionable women : and so, in vice of 
the third of these, came a certain Henri de 
Saint-Remi into this world ; and, as High 
and Puissant Lord, ate his victuals and spent 
his days, on an allotted domain of Fon- 
tette, near Bar-sur- Aube, in Champagne. Of 
High and Puissant Lords, at this Fontette, 
six other generations followed ; and thus 
ultimately, in a space of some two centuries, 
— succeeded in realizing this brisk little 
Jeanne de Saint-Remi, here in question. 
But, ah, what a falling-off! The Royal 
Family of France has well-nigh forgotten 
its left-hand collaterals : the last High and 
Puissant Lord (much dipt by his prede- 
cessors), falling into drink, and left by a 
scandalous world to drink his pitcher dry. 



4f 59 ^ 
had to alienate by degrees his whole worldly 
Possessions, down almost to the indispen- 
sable, or inexpressibles ; and die at last in the 
Paris Hotel-Dieu ; glad that it was not on 
the street. So that he has, indeed, given a sort 
of bastard royal life to little Jeanne, and her 
little brother; but not the smallest earth- 
ly provender to keep it in. The mother, in 
her extremity, forms the wonderfullest con- 
nections ; and little Jeanne, and her little 
brother, go out into the highways to beg. 
A charitable Countess Boulainvilliers, 
struck with the little bright-eyed tatterde- 
malion from the carriage-window, picks her 
up ; has her scoured, clothed ; and rears her, 
in her fluctuating, miscellaneous way, to 
be, about the age of twenty, a nondescript 
of Mantuamaker, Soubrette, Court-beggar, 
Fine-lady, Abigail, and Scion-of-Royalty. 
Sad combination of trades ! The Court, after 
infinite soliciting, puts one off with a hungry 
dole of little more than thirty pounds a-y ear. 
Nay, the audacious Count Boulainvilliers 



^ 6o ^ 

dares, with what purposes he knows best, 
to offer some suspicious presents ! Where- 
upon his good Countess, especially as Man- 
tuamaking languishes, thinks it could not 
but be fit to go down to Bar-sur-Aube; and 
there see whether no fractions of that alien- 
ated Fontette Property, held perhaps on 
insecure tenure, may, by terror or cunning, 
be recoverable. Burning her paper patterns, 
pocketing her pension till more come, Ma- 
demoiselle Jeanne sallies out thither, in her 
twenty-third year. 

Nourished in this singular way, alternat- 
ing between saloon and kitchen-table, with 
the loftiest of pretensions, meanest of pos- 
sessions, our poor High and Puissant Man- 
tuamaker has realized for herself a " face 
not beautiful, yet with a certain piquancy"; 
dark hair, blue eyes ; and a character, which 
the present Writer, a determined student 
of human nature, declares to be undecipher- 
able. Let the Psychologists try it ! Jeanne 
de-Saint-Remi de Valois de France actually 



•^ 6i ^ 

lived, and worked, and was: she has even 
published, at various times, three consider- 
able Volumes of Autobiography, with loose 
Leaves (in Courts of Justice) of unknown 
number; wherein he that runs may read, 
— but not understand. Strange Volumes! 
more like the screeching of distracted night- 
birds (suddenly disturbed by the torch of 
Police-Fowlers) than the articulate utter- 
ance of a rational unfeathered biped. Cheer- 
fully admitting these statements to be all 
lies; we ask. How any mortal could, or 
should, so lie ? 

The Psychologists, however, commit 
one sore mistake; that ofsearching, in every 
character named human, for something like 
a conscience. Being mere contemplative re- 
cluses, for most part, and feeling that Mo- 
rality is the heart of Life, they judge that 
with all the world it is so. Nevertheless, as 
practical men are aware. Life can go on in 
excellent vigour, without crotchet of that 
kind. What is the essence of Life? Voli- 



^ 62 ^ 

tion? Go deeper down, you find a much 
more universal root and characteristic: Di- 
gestion. While Digestion lasts, Life cannot, 
in philosophical language, be said to be ex- 
tinct: and Digestion will give rise to Voli- 
tions enough; at any rate, to Desires and 
attempts, which may pass for such. He who 
looks neither before nor after, any farther 
than the Larder and Stateroom, which lat- 
ter is properly the finest compartment of 
the Larder, will need no World-theory, 
Creed as it is called, or Scheme of Duties ; 
lightly leaving the world to wag as it likes 
with any theory or none, his grand object is 
a theory and practice of ways and means. 
Not goodness or badness is the type of 
him: only shiftiness or shiftlessness. 

And now, disburdened of this obstruc- 
tion, let the Psychologists consider it under 
a bolder view. Consider the brisk Jeanne 
de Saint-Remi de Saint-Shifty as a Spark 
of vehement Life, not developed into Will 
of any kind, yet fully into Desires of all 



^ 63 ^ 
kinds, and cast into such a Life-element as 
we have seen. Vanity and Hunger; a Prin- 
cess of the Blood, yet whose father had sold 
his inexpressibles ; uncertain whether fos- 
ter-daughter of a fond Countess, with hopes 
sky-high, or supernumerary Soubrette ; 
with not enough of mantuamaking: in a 
word, Gigmanity disgigged; one of the sad- 
dest, pitiable, unpitied predicaments of man! 
She is of that light unreflecting class, of that 
light unreflecting sex varium semper et mu- 
tabile. And then her Fine-ladyism, though 
a purseless one : capricious, coquettish, and 
with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; 
now in the rackets, now in the sullens ; vivid 
in contradictory resolves; laughing, weep- 
ing, without reason, — though these acts 
are said to be signs of reason. Consider, 
too, how she has had to work her way, all 
along, by flattery and cajolery ; wheedling, 
eavesdropping, namby-pambying: how she 
needs wages, and knows no other pro- 
ductive trades. Thought can hardly be said 



4f 64 ^ 
to exist in her : only Perception and Device. 
With an understanding lynx-eyed for the 
surface of things, but which pierces beyond 
the surface of nothing; every individual 
thing (for she has never seized the heart 
of it) turns up a new face to her every new 
day, and seems a thing changed, a different 
thing. Thus sits, or rather vehemently 
bobs and hovers her vehement mind, in 
the middle of a boundless many-dancing 
whirlpool of gilt-shreds, paper-clippings, 
and windfalls, — to which the revolving 
chaos of my Uncle Toby's Smoke-jack was 
solidity and regularity. Reader! thou for 
thy sins must have met with such fair 
Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively 
eyes, with their quick snappish fancies ; dis- 
tinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, 
even in Literature: they hum and buzz 
there, on graceful film-wings; — searching, 
nevertheless, with the wonderfuUest skill, 
for honey; "««tamable as flies! " 

WonderfuUest skill for honey, we say; 



^ 65 ^ 
and, pray, mark that, as regards this Coun- 
tess de Saint-Shifty. Her instinct-of-genius 
is prodigious; her appetite fierce. In any 
foraging speculation of the private kind, 
she, unthinking as you call her, will be worth 
a hundred thinkers. And so of such un- 
tamable flies the untamablest, Mademoi- 
selle Jeanne, is now buzzing down, in the 
Bar-sur-Aube Diligence ; to inspect the 
honey-jars of Fontette; and see and smell 
whether there be any flaws in them. 

Alas, at Fontette, we can, with sensibility, 
behold straw-roofs we were nursed under; 
farmers courteously oflTer cooked milk, and 
other country messes : but no soul will 
part with his Landed Property, for which, 
though cheap, he declares hard money was 
paid. The honey-jars are all close, then ? 
— However, a certain Monsieur de La- 
motte, a tall Gendarme, home on furlough 
from Luneville, is now at Bar; pays us 
attentions ; becomes quite particular in 
his attentions, — for we have a face "with 



^ 



^ 66 ^ 

a certain piquancy," the liveliest glib-snap- 
pish tongue, the liveliest kittenish manner 
(not yet hardened into cat-hood), with thir- 
ty pounds a-year, and prospects. M. de 
Lamotte, indeed, is as yet only a private 
sentinel; but then a private sentinel in 
the Gendarmes : and did not his father die 
fighting " at the head of his company," at 
Minden ? Why not in virtue of our own 
Countesship dub him, too. Count; by left- 
hand collateralism, get him advanced ? — 
Finished before the furlough is done ! The 
untamablest of flies has again buzzed off; 
in wedlock with M. de Lamotte ; if not to 
get honey, yet to escape spiders ; and so lies 
in garrison at Luneville, amid coquetries 
and hysterics, in Gigmanity disgigged, — 
disconsolate enough. 

At the end of four long years (too long), 
M. de Lamotte, or call him now Count de 
Lamotte, sees good to lay down his fighting- 
gear (unhappily still only the musket), and 
become what is by certain moderns called 



^ 67 ^ 
" a Civilian " : not a Civil-Law Doctor ; 
merely a Citizen, one who does not live 
by being killed. Alas! cold eclipse has all 
along hung over the Lamotte household. 
Countess Boulainvilliers, it is true, writes 
in the most feeling manner ; but then the 
Royal Finances are so deranged ! Without 
personal pressing solicitation, on the spot, 
no Court-solicitor, were his pension the 
meagrest, can hope to better it. At Lune- 
ville the sun, indeed, shines ; and there is a 
kind of Life ; but only an un-Parisian, half 
or quarter Life ; the very tradesmen grow 
clamorous, and no cunningly devised fable, 
ready-money alone will appease them. 
Commandant Marquis d'Autichamp agrees 
with Madame Boulainvilliers thatajourney 
to Paris were the project ; whither, also, 
he himself is just going. Perfidious Com- 
mandant Marquis ! His plan is seen 
through : he dares to presume to make love 
to a Scion-of-Royalty ; or to hint that he 
could dare to presume to do it I Where- 



^ 68 ^ 

upon, indignant Count de Lamotte, as we 
said, throws up his commission, and down 
his fire-arms, without further delay. The 
King loses a tall private sentinel; the World 
has a new black-leg : and Monsieur and 
Madame de Lamotte take places in the 
Diligence for Strasburg. 

Good Foster-Mother Boulainvilliers, 
however, is no longer at Strasburg : she is 
forward at the Archiepiscopal Palace in 
Saverne ; on a visit there, to his Eminence 
Cardinal Commendator, Grand-Almoner, 
Archbishop Prince Louis de Rohan ! Thus, 
then, has Destiny at last brought it about. 
Thus, after long wanderings, on paths so far 
separate, has the time come, in this late year 
1 783, when, of all the nine hundred millions 
of the Earth's denizens, these preappointed 
Two behold each other ! 

The foolish Cardinal, since no sublunary 
means, not even bribing of the Trianon 
Concierge, will serve, has taken to the su- 
perlunary : he is here, with his fixed-idea 



^ 69 ^ 
and volcanic vaporosity darkening, under 
Cagliostro's management, into thicker and 
thicker opaque, — of the Black- Art itself. 
To the glance of hungry genius, Cardinal 
and Cagliostro could not but have meaning. 
A flush of astonishment, a sigh over bound- 
less wealth (for the mountains of debt lie 
invisible) in the hands of boundless Stupid- 
ity; some vague loomingof indefinite hope : 
all this one can well fancy. But alas, what, 
to a high plush Cardinal, is a now insolvent 
Scion-of-Royalty, — though with a face of 
some piquancy? The good Foster-M other's 
visit, in any case, can last but three days; 
then, amid old namby-pambyings, with ef- 
fusions of the nobler sensibilities and tears 
of pity at least for one's self, Countess de 
Lamotte, and husband, must off with her to 
Paris, and new possibilities at Court. Only 
when the sky again darkens, can this vague 
looming from Saverne look out, by fits, as 
a cheering weather-sign. 



CHAPTER VI 

WILL THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS UNITE? 

OWEVER, the sky, according to 
custom, is not long in darkening 
again. The King's finances, we repeat, are 
in so distracted a state ! No D'Ormesson, 
no Joly de Fleury, wearied with milking the 
already dry, will increase that scandalous 
Thirty Pounds of a Scion-of-Royalty by a 
single doit. Calonne himself, who has a will- 
ing ear and encouraging word for all mortals 
whatsover, only with difficulty, and by aid 
of Madame of France, raises it to some 
still miserable Sixty-five. Worst of all, the 
good Foster-Mother Boulainvilliers,in few 
months, suddenly dies : the wretched wid- 
ower, sitting there, with his white handker- 
chief, to receive condolences, with closed 
shutters, mortuary tapestries, and sepulchral 
cressets burning (which, however, the in- 



^ 71 ^ 
stant the condolences are gone, he blows 
out, to save oil), has the audacity again, 
amid crocodile tears, to — drop hints ! Nay 
more, he, wretched man in all senses, 
abridges the Lamotte table; will besiege 
virtue both in the positive and negative 
way. The Lamottes, wintry as the world 
looks, cannot be gone too soon. 

As to Lamotte the husband, he, for shel- 
ter against much, decisively dives down to 
the " subterranean shades of Rascaldom " ; 
gambles, swindles ; can hope to live, mis- 
cellaneously, if not by the Grace of God, 
yet by the Oversight of the Devil, — for 
a time. Lamotte the wife also makes her 
packages : and waving the unseductive 
Count Boulainvillier Save-all a disdainful 
farewell, removes to the Belle Image in Ver- 
sailles; there within wind of Court, in attic 
apartments, on poor water-gruel board, re- 
solves to await what can betide. So much, 
in few months of this fateful year, 1783, has 
come and gone. 



4^ 71 ^ 

Poor Jeanne de Saint-Remi de Lamotte 
Valois, Ex-Mantuamaker, Scion-of-Roy- 
alty ! What eye, looking into those bare 
attic apartments and water-gruel platters of 
the Belle Image, but must, in spite of itself, 
grow dim with almost a kind of tear for 
thee ! There thou art, with thy quick live- 
ly glances, face of a certain piquancy, thy 
gossamer untamable character, snappish sal- 
lies, glib all-managing tongue ; thy whole 
incarnated, garmented, and so sharply appe- 
tent " spark of Life " ; cast down alive into 
this World, without vote of thine (for the 
Elective Franchises have not yet got that 
length) ; and wouldst so fain live there. Pay- 
ing scot-and-lot; providing, or fresh-scour- 
ing silk court-dresses ; " always keeping a 
gig ! " Thou must hawk and shark to and 
fro, from anteroom to anteroom ; become 
a kind of terror to all men in place, and 
women that influence such ; dance not 
light Ionic measures, but attendance mere- 
ly ; have weepings, thanksgiving effusions, 



^ 73 ^ 
aulic, almost forensic, eloquence : perhaps 
eke out thy thin livelihood by some co- 
quetries, in the small way; — and so, most 
poverty-stricken, cold-blighted, yet with 
young keen blood struggling against it, spin 
forward thy unequal feeble thread, which 
the Atropos-scissors will soon clip ! 

Surely now, if ever, were that vague loom- 
ing from Saverne welcome, as a weather- 
sign. How doubly welcome is his plush 
Eminence's personal arrival ; — for with 
the earliest spring he has come in person, 
as he periodically does; vaporific, driven by 
his fixed-idea. 

Genius, of the mechanical practical kind, 
what is it but a bringing-together of two 
Forces that fit each other, that will give 
birth to a third? Ever, from Tubalcain's 
time. Iron lay ready hammered; Water, 
also, was boiling and bursting ; neverthe- 
less, for want of a genius, there was as yet 
no Steam-engine. In his Eminence Prince 
Louis, in that huge, restless, incoherent 



-If 74 ^ 
Being of his, depend on it, brave Countess, 
there are Forces deep, manifold ; nay, a 
fixed-idea concentrates the whole huge In- 
coherence as it were into one Force : can- 
not the eye of genius discover its fellow ? 
Communing much with the Court vale- 
tailky our brave Countess has more than 
once heard talk of Boehmer, of his Neck- 
lace, and threatened death by water ; in the 
course of gossiping and tattling, this topic 
from time to time emerges ; is commented 
upon with empty laughter, — as if there lay 
no farther meaning in it. To the common 
eye there is, indeed, none : but to the eye of 
genius ? In some moment of inspiration, the 
question rises on our brave Lamotte : Were 
not this, of all extant Forces, the cognate one 
that would unite with Eminence Rohan's? 
Great moment, light-beaming, fire-flashing ; 
like birth of Minerva; like all moments of 
Creation ! Fancy how pulse and breath flut- 
ter, almost stop, in the greatness : the great 
not Divine Idea, the great Diabolic Idea, is 



-^ 75 ^ 
too big for her. — Thought (how often must 
we repeat it?) rules the world. Fire and, in a 
less degree, Frost ; Earth and Sea (for what 
is your swiftest ship, or steamship, but a 
Thought — embodied in wood?); Reformed 
Parliaments, rise and ruin of Nations, — sale 
of Diamonds: all things obey Thought. 
Countess de Saint-Remi de Lamotte, by 
power of Thought, is now a made woman. 
With force of genius she represses, crushes 
deep down, her Undivine Idea ; bends all her 
faculty to realise it. Prepare thyself. Reader, 
for a series of the most surprising Dra- 
matic Representations ever exhibited on 
any stage. 

We hear tell of Dramatists, and scenic 
illusion how " natural," how illusive it was : 
if the spectator, for some half-moment, can 
half-deceive himself into the belief that it 
was real, he departs doubly content. With 
all which, and m^uch more of the like, I have 
no quarrel. But what must be thought of 



^ ^6 ^ 

the Female Dramatist who, for eighteen long 
months, can exhibit the beautifullest Fata- 
Morgana to a plush Cardinal, wide awake, 
with fifty years on his head ; and so lap him 
in her scenic illusion that he never doubts 
but it is all firm earth, and the pasteboard 
Coulisse-trees are producing Hesperides 
apples? Could Madame de Lamotte, then, 
have written a "Hamlet"? I conjecture, not. 
More goes to the writing of a "Hamlet" 
than Gompletest" imitation " of all characters 
and things in this Earth ; there goes, be- 
fore and beyond all, the rarest understanding 
of these, insight into their hidden essences 
and harmonies. Erasmus's Ape, as is known 
in Literary History, sat by while its master 
was shaving, and " imitated " every point of 
the process; but its own foolish beard grew 
never the smoother. 

As in looking at a finished Drama, it were 
nowise meet that the spectator first of all got 
behind the scenes, and saw the burnt-corks, 
brayed-resin, thunder-barrels, and withered 



^ 77 ^ 
hunger-bitten men and women, of which 
such heroic work was made: so herewith the 
reader. A peep into the side-scenes shall be 
granted him, from time to time. But, on the 
whole, repress, O reader, that too insatiable 
scientific curiosity of thine; let thy ^esthetic 
feeling first have play; and witness what 
a Prospero's-grotto poor Eminence Rohan 
is led into, to be pleased he knows not 
why. 

Survey first what we might call the stage- 
lights, orchestra, general structure of the 
theatre, mood and condition of the audience. 
The theatre is the World, with its restless 
business and madness ; near at hand rise the 
royal Domes of Versailles, mystery around 
them, and as background the memory of a 
thousand years. By the side of the River 
Seine walks, haggard, wasted, a Joaillier- 
Bijoutier de la Reine, with Necklace in his 
pocket. The audience is a drunk Christo- 
pher Sly in the fittest humour. A fixed-idea, 
driving him over steep places, like that of 



4^ 78 ^ 
the Gadarenes' Swine, has produced a de- 
ceptibility, as of desperation, that will clutch 
at straws. Understand one other word; Cag- 
liostro is prophesying to him ! The Quack 
of Quacks has now for years had him in lead- 
ing. Transmitting "predictions in cipher"; 
questioning, before Hieroglyphic Screens, 
Columbs in a state of innocence, for elixirs 
of life, and philosopher's stone; unveiling, 
in fuliginous clear-obscure, an imaginary 
majesty of Nature; he isolates him more 
and more from all unpossessed men. Was it 
not enough that poor Rohan had become a 
dissolute, somnolent-violent, ever-vapoury 
Mud-volcano ; but black Egyptian magic 
must be laid on him ! 

If perhaps, too, our Countess de La- 
motte, with her blandishments — ? For 
though not beautiful, she "has a certain 
piquancy,"^/ cetera I — Enough, his poor 
Eminence sits in the fittest place, in the 
fittest mood : a newly-awakened Christo- 
pher Sly ; and with his " small ale," too, 



4^ 79 ^ 
beside him. Touch, only, the lights with 
fire-tipt rod ; and let the orchestra, soft- 
warbling, strike up their fara-lara fiddle- 
diddle-dee ! 




CHAPTER VII 

MARIE-ANTOINETTE 

SUCH a soft- warbling fara-lara was it 
to his Eminence, when, in early Janu- 
ary of the year 1784, our Countess first, 
mysteriously, and under seal of sworn se- 
crecy, hinted to him that, with her winning 
tongue and great talent as Anecdotic His- 
torian, she had worked a passage to the ear 
of Queen's Majesty itself. Gods ! dost thou 
bring with thee airs from Heaven ? Is thy 
face yet radiant with some reflex of that 
Brightness beyond bright? — Men with 
fixed-idea are not as other men. To listen 
to a plain varnished tale, such as your Dra- 
matist can fashion ; to ponder the words ; 
to snuff them up, as Ephraim did the east- 
wind, and grow flatulent and drunk with 
them : what else could poor Eminence do ? 
His poor somnolent, so swift-rocked soul 



4f 8i 4^ 
feels a new element infused into it ; turbid 
resinous light, wide-coruscating, glares over 
the waste of his imagination. Is he inter- 
ested in the mysterious tidings? Hope has 
seized them ; there is in the world nothing 
else that interests him. 

The secret friendship of Queens is not a 
thing to be let sleep : ever new Palace In- 
terviews occur;' — yet in deepest privacy, 
for how should her Majesty awaken so 
many tongues of Principalities and Nobili- 
ties, male and female, that spitefully watch 
her? Above all, however, "on the 2d of 
February," that day of " the Procession 
of blue Ribands," much was spoken of: 
somewhat, too, of Monseigneur de Rohan ! 
— Poor Monseigneur^ hadst thou three 
long ears, thou 'dst hear her. 

But will she not, perhaps, in some future 
priceless Interview, speak a good word for 
thee ? Thyself shalt speak it, happy Emi- 
nence; at least, write it: our tutelary Count- 
ess will be the bearer! — On the 21st of 



^ 82 ^ 

March goes off that long exculpatory im- 
ploratory Letter : it is the first Letter that 
went off from Cardinal to Queen ; to be 
followed, in time, by "above two hundred 
others "; which are graciously answered by 
verbal Messages, nay, at length by Royal 
Autographs on gilt paper, — the whole de- 
livered by our tutelary Countess. The tute- 
lary Countess comes and goes, fetching and 
carrying; with the gravity of a Roman Au- 
gur, inspects those extraordinary chicken- 
bowels, and draws prognostics from them. 
Things are in fair train : the Dauphiness 
took some offence at Monseigneur, but the 
Queen has nigh forgotten it. No, inexor- 
able Queen ; ah, no 1 So good, so free, 
light-hearted ; only sore beset with mali- 
cious Polignacs and others ; — at times, 
also, short of money. 

Marie-Antoinette, as the reader well 
knows, has been much blamed for want 
of Etiquette. Even now, when the other 



^ ^3 ^ 
accusations against her have sunk down to 
oblivion and the Father of Lies, this of 
wanting Etiquette survives her; — in the 
Castle of Ham, at this hour, M. de Poli- 
gnac and Company may be wringing their 
hands, not without an oblique glance at her 
for bringing them thither. She, indeed, dis- 
carded Etiquette ; once, when her carriage 
broke down, she even entered a hackney- 
coach. She would walk, too, at Trianon, in 
mere straw-hat, and perhaps muslin gown ! 
Hence, the Knot of Etiquette being loosed, 
the Frame of Society broke up ; and those 
astonishing " Horrors of the French Re- 
volution" supervened. On what Damo- 
cles' hairs must the judgment-sword hang 
over this distracted Earth? Thus, however, 
it was that Tenterden Steeple brought an 
influx of the Atlantic on us, and so Godwin 
Sands. Thus, too, might it be that because 
Father Noah took the liberty of, say, rins- 
ing out his wine-vat, his Ark was floated 
off, and a world drowned. — Beautiful 



^ 84 ^ 
Highborn that wert so foully hurled low 1 
For, if thy Being came to thee out of old 
Hapsburg Dynasties, came it not also (like 
my own) out of Heaven ? Sunt lachryma 
rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh, is 
there a man's heart that thinks, without 
pity, of those long months and years of 
slow-wasting ignominy ; — of thy birth, 
soft-cradled in Imperial Schonbrunn, the 
winds of heaven not to visit thy face too 
roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy 
eye on splendour; and then of thy Death 
or hundred Deaths, to which the Guillo- 
tine and FouquierTinville's judgment-bar 
was but the merciful end ? Look there, O 
man born of woman ! The bloom of that 
fair face is wasted, the hair is grey with care ; 
the brightness of those eyes is quenched, 
their lids hang drooping, the face is stony 
pale as of one living in death. Mean weeds, 
which her own hand has mended, attire the 
Queen of the World. The death-hurdle, 
where thou sittest pale, motionless, which 



^ 85 ^ 
only curses environ, has to stop : a people, 

drunk with vengeance, will drink it again 
in full draught, looking at thee there. Far 
as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of 
maniac heads; the air deaf with their tri- 
umph-yell ! The Living-dead must shud- 
der with yet one other pang ; her startled 
blood yet again suffuses with the hue of 
agony that pale face, which she hides with 
her hands. There is then no heart to say, 
God pity thee ? Oh, think not of these ; 
think of Him whom thou worshippest, the 
Crucified, — who also treading the wine- 
press aloney fronted sorrow still deeper; 
and triumphed over it, and made it holy; 
and built of it a " Sanctuary of Sorrow," 
for thee and all the wretched ! Thy path of 
thorns is nigh ended. One long last look 
at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so 
light, — where thy children shall not dwell. 
The head is on the block ; the axe rushes 
— Dumb lies the World ; that wild-yelling 
World, and all its madness, is behind thee. 



4t S6 ^ 

Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully 
hurled low ! Rest yet in thy innocent grace- 
fully heedless seclusion, unintruded on by 
msj while rude hands have not yet dese- 
crated it. Be the curtains, that shroud-in 
(if for the last time on this Earth) a Royal 
Life, still sacred to me. Tby fault, in the 
French Revolution, was that thou wert the 
Symbol of the Sin and Misery of a thou- 
sand years ; that with Saint-Bartholomews, 
and Jacqueries, with Gabelles,and Dragon- 
ades,and Parcs-aux-cerfs, the heart of man- 
kind was filled full, — and foamed over, into 
all-involving madness. To no Napoleon, to 
no Cromwell wert thou wedded: such sit 
not in the highest rank, of themselves; are 
raised on high by the shaking and confound- 
ing of all the ranks ! As poor peasants, how 
happy, worthy had ye two been ! But by 
evil destiny ye were made a King and Queen 
of; and so both once more — are become 
an astonishment and a by-word to all times. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS WILL UNITE 

COUNTESS DE LAMOTTE, 
then, had penetrated into the confi- 
dence of the Queen ? Those gilt-paper 
Autographs were actually written by the 
Queen?" Reader, forget not to repress 
that too insatiable scientific curiosity of 
thine ! What I know is, that a certain 
Villette-de-Retaux, with military whiskers, 
denizen of Rascaldom, comrade there of 
Monsieur le Comte, is skillful in imitating 
hands. Certain it is also, that Madame la 
Comtesse has penetrated to the Trianon 
— Doorkeeper's. Nay, as Campan herself 
must admit, she has met, " at a Man-mid- 
wife's in Versailles," with worthy Queen's- 
valet Lesclaux, — or Desclos, for there is 
no uniformity in it. With these, or the like 
of these, she in the back-parlour of the 



4f 88 ^ 

Palace itself (if late enough), may pick a 
merry-thought, sip the foam from a glass of 
Champagne. No farther seek her honours 
to disclose, for the present ; or anatomical- 
ly dissect, as we said, those extraordinary 
chicken-bowels, from which she, and she 
alone, can read Decrees of Fate, and also 
realise them. 

Sceptic, seest thou his Eminence waiting 
there, in the moonlight ; hovering to and fro 
on the back terrace, till she come out — from 
the ineffable Interview ? He is close muffled ; 
walks restlessly observant; shy also, and 
courting the shade. She comes : up closer 
with thy capote, O Eminence, down with 
thy broadbrim ; for she has an escort. 'T is 
but the good Monsieur Queen's-valet Les- 
claux: and now he is sent back again, as no 
longer needful. Mark him, Monseigneur, 
nevertheless ; thou wilt see him yet another 
time. Monseigneur marks little: his heart 
is in the ineffable Interview, in the gilt- 
paper Autograph alone. — Queen's-valet 



^ 89 ^ 
Lesclaux ? Me thinks he has much the 
stature of Villette, denizen of Rascaldom ! 
Impossible! 

How our Countess managed with Cagli- 
ostro ? Cagliostro, gone from Strasburg, is 
as yet far distant, winging his way through 
dim Space; will not be here for months : 
only his "predictions in cipher" are here. 
Here or there, however, Cagliostro, to our 
Countess, can be useful. Ataglance, theeye 
of genius has descried him to be a bottom- 
less slough of falsity, vanity, gulosity, and 
thick-eyed stupidity: of foulest material, 
but of fattest; — fit compost for the Plant 
she is rearing. Him who has deceived all 
Europe she can undertake to deceive. His 
Columbs, demonic Masonries, Egyptian 
Elixirs, what is all this to the light-giggling 
exclusively practical Lamotte ? It runs off 
from her, as all speculation, good, bad, and 
indifferent, has always done, "like water 
from one in wax-cloth dress." With the lips 
meanwhile she can honour it; Oil of Flat- 



^ go ^ 

tery, the best patent anti-friction known, 
subdues all irregularities whatsoever. 

On Cagliostro, again, on his side, a cer- 
tain uneasy feeling might, for moments, 
intrude itself; the raven loves not ravens. 
But what can he do? Nay, she is partly 
playing his game: can he not spill her full 
cup yet, at the right season, and pack her out 
of doors ? Oftenest in their joyous orgies, 
this light, fascinating Countess — who per- 
haps has a design on bis heart — seems to 
him but one other of those light Papiliones, 
who have fluttered round him in all climates ; 
whom with grim muzzle he has snapt by 
the thousand. 

Thus, what with light, fascinating Coun- 
tess, what with Quack of Quacks, poor 
Eminence de Rohan lies safe; his Mud- 
volcano placidly simmering in thick Egyp- 
tian haze: withdrawn from all the world. 
Moving figures, as of men, he sees; takes 
not the trouble to look at. Court-cousins 



^ 91 ^ 

rally him; are answered in silence; or, if 
it go too far, in mud-explosions terrifico- 
absurd. Court-cousins and all mankind are 
unreal shadows merely; Queen's favour 
the only substance. 

Nevertheless, the World, on its side, too, 
has an existence ; lies not idle in these days. 
It has got its Versailles Treaty signed, long 
months ago; and the plenipotentiaries all 
home again, for votes of thanks. Paris, Lon- 
don, and other great Cities and small, are 
working, intriguing; dying, being born. 
There, in the Rue Taranne, for instance, the 
once noisy Denis Diderot has fallen silent 
enough. Here also, in Bolt Court, old Sam- 
uel Johnson, like an over-wearied Giant, 
must lie down, and slumber without dream ; 
— the rattling of carriages and wains, and 
all the world's din and business rolling 
by, as ever, from of old. — Sieur Boehmer, 
however, has not yet drowned himself 
in the Seine; only walks haggard, wasted, 
purposing to do it. 



^ gi ^ 

News (by the merest accident in the 
world) reach Sieur Boehmer, of Madame's 
new favour with her Majesty ! Men will do 
much before they drown. Sieur Boehmer's 
Necklace is on Madame's table, his gut- 
tural-nasal rhetoric in her ear: he will abate 
many a pound and penny of the first just 
price; he will give cheerfully a thousand 
Louis-d'or,as cadeau,to the generous Scion- 
of-Royalty that shall persuade her Majesty. 
The man's importunities grow quite annoy- 
ing to our Countess ; who, in her glib way, 
satirically prattles how she has been bored, 
— to Monseigneur, among others. 

Dozing on down cushions, far inwards, 
with soft ministering Hebes, and luxurious 
appliances; with ranked Heyducs, and a 
Valetaille innumerable, that shut out the 
prose-world and its discord : thus lies Mon- 
seigneur, in enchanted dream. Can he, even 
in sleep, forget his tutelary Countess, and 
her service ? By the delicatest presents he 



4t 93 ^ 
alleviates her distresses, most undeserved. 
Nay, once or twice, gilt Autographs, from 
a Queen, — with whom he is evidently ris- 
ing to unknown heights in favour, — have 
done Monseigneur the honour to make him 
her Majesty's Grand Almoner, when the 
case was pressing. Monseigneur, we say, has 
had the honour to disburse charitable cash, 
on her Majesty's behalf, to this or the other 
distressed deserving object: say only to the 
length of a few thousand pounds, advanced 
from his own funds; — her Majesty being 
at the moment so poor, and charity a thing 
that will not wait. Always Madame, good, 
foolish, gadding creature, takes charge of 
delivering the money. — Madame can de- 
scend from her attics, in the Belle Image; 
and feel the smiles of Nature and Fortune, 
a little ; so bounteous has the Queen's 
Majesty been. 

To Monseigneurthe power of money over 
highest female hearts had never been in- 
credible. Presents have,many times, worked 



4t 94 ^ 
wonders. But then, O Heavens, what pres- 
ent? Scarcely were the Cloud-Compeller 
himself, all coined into new Louis-d'or, 
worthy to alight in such a lap. Loans, chari- 
table disbursements, however, as we see, are 
permissible: these, by defect of payment, 
may become presents. In the vortex of his 
Eminence's day-dreams, lumbering multi- 
form slowly round, this of importunate 
Boehmer and his Necklace, from time to 
time, turns up. Is the Queen's Majesty 
at heart desirous of it; but again, at the 
moment, too poor? Our tutelary Countess 
answers vaguely, mysteriously; — confesses, 
at last, under oath of secrecy, her own private 
suspicion that the Queen wants this same 
Necklace, of all things ; but dare not, for a 
stingy husband, buy it. She, the Countess 
de Lamotte, will look farther into the mat- 
ter; and, if aught serviceable to his Emi- 
nence can be suggested, in a good way 
suggest it, in the proper quarter. 

Walk warily, Countess de Lamotte; for 



^ 95 ^ 
now, with thickening breath, thou approach- 
est the moment of moments! Principalities 
and Powers, Parlement^ Grand Chambre and 
Tournelley with all their whips and gibbet- 
wheels ; the very Crack of Doom hangs over 
thee, if thou trip. Forward, with nerve of 
iron, on shoes of felt ; like a Treasure-digger, 
in silence, looking neither to the right nor 
left, — where yawn abysses deep as the Pool, 
and all Pandemonium hovers, eager to rend 
thee into rags ! 




CHAPTER IX 

PARK OF VERSAILLES 

R will the reader incline rather, tak- 
ing the other and sunny side of the 
matter, to enter that Lamottic Circean the- 
atrical establishment of Monseigneur de 
Rohan ; and see there how, under the best 
of Dramaturgists, Melodrama with sweep- 
ing pall flits past him ; while the enchanted 
Diamond fruit is gradually ripening, to fall 
by a shake ? 

The 28th of July, of this same moment- 
ous 1784, has come ; and with it the most 
rapturous tumult into the heart of Mon- 
seigneur. Ineffable expectancy stirs-up his 
whole soul, with the much that lies therein, 
from its lowest foundations : borne on wild 
seas to Armida Islands, yet, as is fit, through 
Horror dim-hovering round, he tumultu- 
ously rocks. To the Chateau, to the Park ! 



^ 97 ^ 
This night the Queen will meet thee, the 
Queen herself: so far has our tutelary- 
Countess brought it. What can minister- 
ial impediments, Polignac intrigues, avail 
against the favour, nay — Heaven and 
Earth ! — perhaps the tenderness of a 
Queen ? She vanishes from amid their 
meshwork of Etiquette and Cabal ; de- 
scends from her celestial Zodiac, to thee a 
shepherd of Latmos. Alas, a white-bearded 
pursy shepherd, fat and scant of breath ! 
Who can account for the taste of females? 
But thou, burnish-up thy whole faculties 
of gallantry, thy fifty-years experience of 
the sex; this night, or never! — In such 
unutterable meditations does Monseigneur 
restlessly spend the day; and long for dark- 
ness, yet dread it. 

Darkness has at length come. The per- 
pendicular rows of Heyducs, in that Palais 
or Hotel de Strasbourg, are all cast hori- 
zontal, prostrate in sleep; the very Con- 
cierge, resupine, with open mouth, audibly 



^ 98 ^ 
drinks-in nepenthe; when Monseigneur, 
"in blue great-coat, with slouched hat," 
issues softly, with his henchman Planta 
of the Grisons, to the Park of Versailles. 
Planta must loiter invisible in the distance; 
Slouched-hat will wait here, among the leafy 
thickets; till our tutelary Countess, "in 
black domino," announce the moment, 
which surely must be near. 

The night is of the darkest for the sea- 
son; no Moon; warm,slumbering July, in 
motionless clouds, drops fatness over the 
Earth. The very stars from the Zenith see 
not Monseigneur; see only his and the 
world's cloud-covering, fringed with twi- 
light in the far North. Midnight, telling 
itself forth from these shadowy Palace 
Domes ? All the steeples of Versailles, the 
villages around, with metal tongue, and 
huge Paris itself dull-droning, answer drow- 
sily. Yes! Sleep rules this Hemisphere of 
the World. From Arctic to Antarctic, the 
Life of our Earth lies all, in long swaths. 



^ 99 ^ 
or rows (like those rows of Heyducs 
and snoring Concierge), successively mown 
down, from vertical to horizontal, by Sleep ! 
Rather curious to consider. 

The flowers are all asleep in Little Tri- 
anon, the roses folded-in for the night; but 
the Rose of Roses still wakes. O wondrous 
Earth ! O doubly wondrous Park of Ver- 
sailles, with Little and Great Trianon, — 
and a scarce-breathing Monseigneur ! Ye 
Hydraulics of Lenotre, that also slumber, 
with stop-cocks, in your deep leaden cham- 
bers, babble not of him, when ye arise. Ye 
odorous balm-shrubs, huge spectral Cedars, 
thou sacred Boscage of Hornbeam, ye dim 
Pavilions of the Peerless, whisper not! 
Moon, lie silent, hidden in thy vacant 
cave ; no star look down : let neither H eaven 
nor Hell peep through the blanket of the 
Night, to cry. Hold, Hold ! — The Black 
Domino ? Ha ! Yes ! — With stouter step 
than might have been expected, Monsei- 
gneur is under way ; the Black Domino had 



4t lOO ^ 

only to whisper, low and eager: "In the 
Hornbeam Arbour ! " And now, Cardinal, 
O now ! — Yes, there hovers the white Ce- 
lestial ; " in white robe of linon mouchete^* 
finer than moonshine ; a Juno by her bear- 
ing : there, in that bosket ! Monseigneur, 
down on thy knees ; never can red breeches 
be better wasted. Oh, he would kiss the 
royal shoe-tie, or its shadow if there were 
one : not words ; only broken gaspings, 
murmuring prostrations, eloquently speak 
his meaning. But, ah, behold ! Our tute- 
lary Black Domino, in haste, with vehe- 
ment whisper :"0« vient." The white Juno 
drops a fairest Rose, with these ever-me- 
morable words, " Fous savez ce que cela veut 
dire. You know what that means"; van- 
ishes in the thickets, the Black Domino 
hurrying her with eager whisper o( " Fite, 
vite. Away, away ! " for the sound of foot- 
steps (doubtless from Madame, and Ma- 
dame d'Artois, unwelcome sisters that they 
are!) is approaching fast. Monseigneur 



4t loi ^ 

picks up his Rose ; runs as for the King's 
plate, almost overturns poor Planta, whose 
laugh assures him that all is safe. 

O Ixion de Rohan, happiest mortal of 
this world, since the first Ixion, of death- 
less memory, — who nevertheless, in that 
cloud-embrace, begat strange Centaurs ! 
Thou art Prime Minister of France with- 
out peradventure : is not this the Rose of 
Royalty, worthy to become ottar of roses, 
and yield perfume forever? How fhoUy of 
all people, wilt contrive to govern France, 
in these very peculiar times — But that is 
little to the matter. There, doubtless, is thy 
Rose (which, methinks, it were well to have 
a Box or Casket made for) : nay, was there 
not in the dulcet of thy Juno's " Fous savez " 
a kind of trepidation, a quaver, — as of still 
deeper meanings ! 

Reader, there is hitherto no item of this 
miracle that is not historically proved and 
true. — In distracted black-magical phan- 



4^ I02 4§» 

tasmagory, adumbrations of yet higher and 
highest Dalliances hover stupendous in the 
background : whereof your Georgels, and 
Campans, and other official characters can 
take no notice ! There, in distracted black- 
magical phantasmagory, let these hover. 
The truth of them for us is that they do so 
hover. The truth of them in itself is known 
only to three persons : Dame self-styled 
Countess de Lamotte ; the Devil ; and 
Philippe Egalite, — who furnished money 
and facts for the Lamotte "Memoirs," and, 
before guillotinement, begat the present 
King of the French. 

Enough that Ixion de Rohan, lapsed al- 
most into deliquium, by such sober cer- 
tainty of waking bliss, is the happiest of 
all men; and his tutelary Countess the 
dearest of all women, save one only. On 
the a 5th of August (so strong still are 
those villainous Drawing-room cabals) he 
goes, weeping, but submissive, by order of 
a gilt Autograph, home to Saverne ; till 



4^ I03 ^ 
farther dignities can be matured for him. 
He carries his Rose, now considerably 
faded, in a Casket of fit price ; may, if he 
so please, perpetuate it as potpourri. He 
names a favourite walk in his Archiepisco- 
pal pleasure-grounds. Promenade de la Rose; 
there let him court digestion, and loyally 
somnambulate till called for. 

I noticed it as a coincidence in chrono- 
logy, that, few days after this date, the 
Demoiselle (or even, for the last month. 
Baroness) Gay d'Oliva began to find Count- 
ess de Lamotte " not at home," in her fine 
Paris hotel, in her fine Charonne country- 
house ; and went no more, with Villette, 
and such pleasant dinner-guests, and her, to 
see Beaumarchais' "Manage de Figaro" 
running its hundred nights. 




CHAPTER X 

BEHIND THE SCENES 

THE Queen?" Good reader, thou 
surely art not a Partridge the School- 
master or a Monselgneur de Rohan, to 
mistake the stage for a reality ! — " But 
who this Demoiselle d'Oliva was ? " Reader, 
let us remark rather how the labours of 
our Dramaturgic Countess are increasing. 
New actors I see on the scene; not one 
of whom shall guess what the other is do- 
ing ; or, indeed, know rightly what himself 
is doing. For example, cannot Messieurs 
de Lamotte and Villette, of Rascaldom, 
like Nisus and Euryalus, take a midnight 
walk of contemplation, with "footsteps of 
Madame and Madame d'Artois " (since all 
footsteps are much the same), without of- 
fence to any one? A Queen's Similitude 
can believe that a Queen's Self, for frolic's 



^ 105 ^ 

sake, is looking at her through the thickets ; 
a terrestrial Cardinal can kiss with devo- 
tion a celestial Queen's slipper, or Queen's 
Similitude's sHpper, — and no one but a 
Black Domino the wiser. All these shall 
follow each his precalculated course ; for 
their inward mechanism is known, and fit 
wires hook themselves on this. To two 
only is a clear belief vouchsafed : to Mon- 
seigneur, a clear belief founded on stu- 
pidity : to the great creative Dramaturgist, 
sitting at the heart of the whole mystery, a 
clear belief founded on completest insight. 
Great creative Dramaturgist! How, like 
Schiller, " by union of the Possible with the 
Necessarily existing, she brings out the*' 
— Eighty thousand Pounds ! Don Aranda, 
with his triple-sealed missives and hood- 
winked secretaries, bragged justly that he 
cut down the Jesuits in one day : but here, 
without ministerial salary, or King's favour, 
or any help beyond her own black dom- 
ino, labours a greater than he. How she 



■^ io6 ^ 
advances, stealthily, steadfastly, with Argus 
eye and ever-ready brain ; with nerve of 
iron, on shoes of felt! O worthy to have 
intrigued for Jesuitdom, for Pope's Tiara; 
— to have been Pope Joan thyself, in 
those old days ; and as Arachne of Arach- 
nes, sat in the centre of that stupendous 
spider-web, which, reaching from Goa to 
Acapulco, and from Heaven to Hell, over- 
netted the thoughts and souls of men ! — 
Of which spider-web stray tatters, in fa- 
vourable dewy mornings, even yet become 
visible. 

The Demoiselle d'Oliva? She is a Pa- 
risian Demoiselle of three-and-twenty, tall, 
blonde, and beautiful ; from unjust guardi- 
ans, and an evil world, she has had some- 
what to suffer. 

" In this month of June, 1784," says the 
Demoiselle herself, in her (judicial) Auto- 
biography, " I occupied a small apartment 
in the Rue du Jour, Quartier Saint-Eu- 
stache. I was not far from the Garden of 



•^ 107 4- 

the Palais- Royal ; I had made it my usual 
promenade." For, indeed, the real God's- 
truth is, I was a Parisian unfortunate- 
female, with moderate custom ; and one 
must go where his market lies. "I fre- 
quently passed three or four hours of the 
afternoon there, with some women of my 
acquaintance, and a little child of four years 
old, whom I was fond of, whom his parents 
willingly trusted with me. I even went 
thither alone, except for him, when other 
company failed. 

"One afternoon, in the month of July 
following, I was at the Palais-Royal : my 
whole company, at the moment, was the 
child I speak of. A tall young man, walk- 
ing alone, passes several times before me. 
He was a man I had never seen. He looks 
at me ; he looks fixedly at me. I observe 
even that always, as he comes near, he 
slackens his pace, as if to survey me more at 
leisure. A chair stood vacant ; two or three 
feet from mine. He seats himself there. 



4f io8 ^ 

" Till this instant, the sight of the young 
man, his walks, his approaches, his repeated 
gazings, had made no impression on me. 
But now, when he was sitting so close by, 
I could not avoid noticing him. His eyes 
ceased not to wander over all my person. 
His air becomes earnest, grave. An un- 
quiet curiosity appears to agitate him. He 
seems to measure my figure, to seize by 
turns all parts of my physiognomy. — He 
finds me (but whispers not a syllable of it) 
tolerably like, both in person and profile; 
for even the Abbe Georgel says, I was a 
belle courtisane. 

" It is time to name this young man : he 
was the Sieur de Lamotte, styling himself 
Comte de Lamotte. Who doubts it ? He 
praises * my feeble charms'; expresses a 
wish to * pay his addresses to me.' I, being 
a lone spinster, know not what to say; 
think it best in the mean while to retire. 
Vain precaution ! I see him all on a sud- 
den appear in my apartment ! " 



^ 109 ^ 

On his " ninth visit " (for he was always 
civiHty itself), he talks of introducing a 
great Court-lady, by whose means I may 
even do her Majesty some little secret- 
service, — the reward of which will be 
unspeakable. In the dusk of the evening, 
silks mysteriously rustle : enter the creative 
Dramaturgist, Dame styled Countess de 
Lamotte ; and so — the too intrusive sci- 
entific reader has now, for his punishment, 
gof on the wrong-side of that loveliest 
Transparency ; finds nothing but grease- 
pots, and vapour of expiring wicks ! 

The Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva may once 
more sit, or stand, in the Palais-Royal, with 
such custom as will come. In due time, she 
shall again, but with breath of Terror, be 
blown upon ; and blown out of France to 
Brussels. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NECKLACE IS SOLD 

A UTUMNjwithitsgreymoaningwinds 
JL \, and coating of red strewn leaves, 
invites Courtiers to enjoy the charms of 
Nature; and all business of moment stands 
still. Countess de Lamotte, while everything 
is so stagnant, and even Boehmer has locked 
up his Necklace and his hopes for the sea- 
son, can drive, with her Count and Eury- 
alus Villette, down to native Bar-sur-Aube ; 
and there (in virtue of a Queen's bounty) 
show the envious a Scion-of-Royalty re- 
grafted ; and made them yellower looking 
on it. A well-varnished chariot, with the 
Arms of Valois duly painted in bend-sin- 
ister; a house gallantly furnished, bodies 
gallantly attired, — secure them the favour- 
ablest reception from all manner of men. 
The very Due de Penthievre (Egalite's 



•4^ III ^ 

father-in-law) welcomes our Lamotte, with 
that urbanity characteristic of his high sta- 
tion and the old school. Worth, indeed, 
makes the man, or woman; but "leather" 
of gig-straps, and " prunella " of gig-lining, 
first makes it go. 

The great creative Dramaturgist has thus 
let down her drop-scene ; and only, with a 
Letter or two to Saverne, or even a visit 
thither (for it is but a day's drive from Bar), 
keeps up a due modicum of intermediate 
instrumental music. She needs some pause, 
in good sooth, to collect herself a little ; for 
the last act and grand Catastrophe is at hand. 
Two fixed-ideas. Cardinal's and Jeweller's, 
a negative and a positive, have felt each 
other; stimulated now by new hope, are 
rapidly revolving round each other, and 
approximating ; like two flames, are stretch- 
ing-out long fire-tongues to join and be one. 

Boehmer, on his side, is ready with the 
readiest ; as, indeed, he has been these four 



•^ 112 ^ 

long years. The Countess, it is true, will 
have neither part nor lot in that foolish Ca- 
deau of his, or in the whole foolish Neck- 
lace business : this she has, in plain words, 
and even not without asperity, due to a bore 
of such magnitude, given him to know. 
From her, nevertheless, by cunning infer- 
ence, and the merest accident in the world, 
the sly Joaillier-Bijoutier has gleaned thus 
much, that Monseigneur de Rohan is the 
man. — Enough! Enough! Madame shall 
be no more troubled. Rest there, in hope, 
thou Necklace of the Devil; but, O Mon- 
seigneur, be thy return speedy ! 

Alas, the man lives not that would be 
speedier than Monseigneur, if he durst. But 
as yet no gilt Autograph invites him, per- 
mits him; the few gilt Autographs are all 
negatory, procrastinating. Cabals of Court ; 
forever cabals ! Nay, if it be not for some 
Necklace, or other such crotchet or neces- 
sity, who knows but he may never be recalled 
(so fickle is womankind); but forgotten. 



^ 113 ^ 

and left to rot here, like his Rose, into 
potpourri ? Our tutelary Countess, too, is 
shyer in this matter than we ever saw her. 
Nevertheless, by intense skilful cross-ques- 
tioning, he has extorted somewhat; sees 
partly how it stands. The Queen's Majesty 
will have her Necklace ; for when, in such 
case, had not woman her way ? The Queen's 
Majesty can even pay for it — by instal- 
ments ; but then the stingy husband! Once 
for all, she will not be seen in the business. 
Now, therefore, were it, or were it not, per- 
missible to mortal to transact it secretly 
in her stead ? That is the question. If to 
mortal, then to Monseigneur. Our Count- 
ess has even ventured to hint afar off at 
Monseigneur (kind Countess!) in the 
proper quarter; but his discretion in regard 
to money-matters is doubted. Discretion ? 
And I on the Promenade de la Rose? — Ex- 
plode not, O Eminence ! Trust will spring 
of trial ; thy hour is coming. 



4^ 114 ^ 

The Lamottes meanwhile have, left their 
farewell card with all the respectable classes 
of Bar-sur-Aube ; our Dramaturgist stands 
again behind the scenes at Paris. How is 
itj O Monseigneur, that she is still so shy 
with thee, in this matter of the Necklace ; 
that she leaves the love-lorn Latmian shep- 
herd to droop, here in lone Saverne, like 
weeping-ash, in naked winter, on his Prom- 
enade of the Rose, with vague commonplace 
responses that his hour is coming? — By 
Heaven and Earth ! at last, in late January, 
it is come. Behold it, this new gilt Auto- 
graph : " To Paris, on a small business 
of delicacy, which our Countess will ex- 
plain," — which I already know! To Paris ! 
Horses ; postilions ; beef-eaters ! — And so 
his resuscitated Eminence, all wrapt in furs, 
in the pleasantest frost (Abbe Georgel says, 
un beau f void de Janvier)^ over clear-jing- 
ling highway rolls rapidly, — borne on the 
bosom of Dreams. 

O Dame de Lamotte, has the enchanted 



^ 115 ^ 

Diamond fruit ripened, then ? Hast thou 
given it the little shake, big with unutter- 
able fate ? — I ? can the Dame justly retort : 
Who saw me in it? — The reader, there- 
fore, has still Three scenic Exhibitions to 
look at, by our great Dramaturgist; then the 
Fourth and last, — by another Author. 

To us, reflecting how oftenest the true 
moving force in human things works hid- 
den underground, it seems small marvel 
that this month of January, 1785, wherein 
our Countess so little courts the eye of the 
vulgar historian, should nevertheless have 
been the busiest of all for her ; especially 
the latter half thereof. 

Wisely eschewing matters of Business 
(which she could never in her life under- 
stand), our Countess will personally take no 
charge of that bargain-making ; leaves it all 
to her Majesty and the gilt Autographs. 
Assiduous Boehmer nevertheless is in fre- 
quent close conference with Monseigneur: 



^ ii6 «§► 

the Paris Palais-de-Strasbourg, shut to the 
rest of men, sees the Joaillier-Bijoutier, 
with eager official aspect, come andgo. The 
grand difficulty is — must we say it ? — her 
Majesty's wilful whimsicality, unacquaint- 
ance with Business. She positively will not 
write a gilt Autograph, authorising his Em- 
inence to make the bargain ; but writes 
rather, in a pettish manner, that the thing 
is of no consequence, and can be given up ! 
Thus must the poor Countess dash to and 
fro, like a weaver's shuttle, between Paris 
and Versailles ; wear her horses and nerves 
to pieces ; nay, sometimes in the hottest 
haste, wait many hours within call of the 
Palace, considering what can be done (with 
none but Villette to bear her company), — 
till the Queen's whim pass. 

At length, after furious-driving and con- 
ferences enough, on the 29th of January, 
a middle course is hit on. Cautious Boeh- 
mer shall write out, on finest paper, his 
terms ; which are really rather fair : Sixteen 



4t 117 ^ 
hundred thousand livres ; to be paid in five 
equal instalments ; the first this day six 
months ; the other four from three months 
to three months ; this is what Court-Jewel- 
lers Boehmer and Bassange, on the one part, 
and Prince Cardinal Commendator Louis 
de Rohan, on the other part, will stand to ; 
witness their hands. Which written sheet 
of finest paper our poor Countess must 
again take charge of, again dash-off with to 
Versailles ; and therefrom, after trouble 
unspeakable (shared in only by the faithful 
Villette, of Rascaldom), return with it, bear- 
ing this most precious marginal note, " Bon 
— Marie-Antoinette de France " in the Au- 
tograph-hand ! Happy Cardinal ! this thou 
shalt keep in the innermost of all thy re- 
positories. Boehmer, meanwhile, secret as 
Death, shall tell no man that he has sold his 
Necklace; or if much pressed for an actual 
sight of the same, confess that it is sold to 
the Favourite Sultana of the Grand Turk 
for the time being. 



^ ii8 ^ 

Thus, then, do the smoking Lamotte 
horses at length get rubbed down, and feel 
the taste of oats, after midnight ; the La- 
motte Countess can also gradually sink into 
needful slumber, perhaps not unbroken by 
dreams. On the morrow the bargain shall 
be concluded ; next day the Necklace be 
delivered, on Monseigneur's receipt. 

Will the reader, therefore, be pleased to 
glance at the following two Life- Pictures, 
Real-Phantasmagories, or whatever we 
may call them ; they are the two first of 
those Three scenic real-poetic exhibitions, 
brought about by our Dramaturgist : short 
Exhibitions, but essential ones. 




CHAPTER XII 

THE NECKLACE VANISHES 

T is the 1st day of February ; that grand 
day of Delivery. The Sieur Boehmer is 
in the Court of the Palais de Strasbourg ; 
his look mysterious-official, and though 
much emaciated, radiant with enthusiasm. 
The Seine has missed him ; though lean, 
he will fatten again, and live through new 
enterprises. 

Singular, were we not used to it : the 
name " Boehmer," as it passes upwards and 
inwards, lowers all halberts of Heyducs 
in perpendicular rows: the historical eye 
beholds him, bowing low, with plenteous 
smiles, in the plush Saloon of Audience. 
Will it please Monseigneur, then, to do the 
ne-plus-ultra of Necklaces the honour of 
looking at it? A piece of Art, which the 
Universe cannot parallel, shall be parted 



4^ lao ^ 

with (Necessity compels Court-Jewellers) 
at that ruinously low sum. They, the 
Court-Jewellers, shall have much ado to 
weather it ; but their work, at least, will 
find a fit Wearer, and go down to juster 
posterity. Monseigneur will merely have 
the condescension to sign this Receipt of 
Delivery: all the rest, her Highness the Sul- 
tana of the Sublime Porte has settled it. — 
Here the Court-Jeweller, with his joyous 
though now much-emaciated face, ventures 
on a faint knowing smile ; to which, in the 
lofty dissolute-serene of Monseigneur's, 
some twinkle of permission could not but 
respond. — This is the First of those Three 
real-poetic Exhibitions, brought about by 
our Dramaturgist, — with perfect success. 
It was said, long afterwards, that Mon- 
seigneur should have known, and even that 
Boehmershouldhaveknown, her Highness 
the Sultana's marginal note, her "Righf — 
Marie-Antoinette of France^^ to be a forg- 
ery and mockery : the " of France " was fatal 



<^ 121 1^ 

to it. Easy talking, easy criticising ! But 
how are two enchanted men to know ; two 
men with a fixed-idea each, a negative and a 
positive, rushing together to neutralize each 
other in rapture? — Enough, Monseigneur 
has the ne-plus-ultra of Necklaces, con- 
quered by man's valour and woman's wit; 
and rolls off with it, in mysterious speed, 
to Versailles, — triumphant as a Jason with 
his Golden Fleece. 

The Second grand scenic Exhibition by 
our Dramaturgic Countess occurs in her 
own apartment at Versailles, so early as 
the following night. It is a commodious 
apartment, with alcove; and the alcove has 
a glass door. Monseigneur enters, — with a 
follower bearing a mysterious Casket, who 
carefully deposits it, and then respectfully 
withdraws. It is the Necklace itself in all 
its glory ! Our tutelary. Countess,and Mon- 
seigneur, and we, can at leisure admire the 
queenly Talisman; congratulate ourselves 
that the painful conquest of it is achieved. 



^ 122 ^ 

But, hist ! A knock, mild but decisive, as 
from one knocking with authority ! Mon- 
seigneur and we retire to our alcove ; there 
from behind our glass screen, observe what 
passes. Who comes ? The door flung open: 
deparlaReine! Behold him, Monseigneur: 
he enters with grave, respectful, yet official 
air; worthy Monsieur Queen's-valet Les- 
claux, the same who escorted our tutelary 
Countess, that moonlight night, from the 
back apartments of Versailles. Said we not, 
thou wouldst see him once more? — Me- 
thinks, again, spite of his Queen's-uniform, 
he has much the features of Villette of Ras- 
caldom ! — Rascaldom or Valetdom (for to 
the blind all colours are the same), he has, 
with his grave, respectful, yet official air, 
received the Casket, and its priceless con- 
tents; with fit injunction, with fit engage- 
ments; and retires bowing low. 

Thus softly, silently, like a very Dream, 
flits away our solid Necklace — through the 
Horn Gate of Dreams'. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SCENE THIRD : BY DAME DE LAMOTTE 

N'OW, too, in these same days (as he 
can afterwards prove by affidavit of 
Landlords) arrives Count Cagliostro him- 
selfjfrom Lyons ! No longer by predictions 
in cipher; but by his living voice, often in 
rapt communion with the unseen world, 
"with Caraffe and four candles"; by his 
greasy prophetic bull-dog face, said to be 
the "most perfect quack-face of the eight- 
eenth century," can we assure ourselves 
that all is well ; that all will turn "to the 
glory of Monseigneur, to the good of 
France, and of mankind," and of Egyptian 
Masonry. " Tokay flows like water" ; our 
charming Countess, with her piquancy of 
face, is sprightlier than ever; enlivens with 
the brightest sallies, with the adroitest flat- 
teries to all, those suppers of the gods. O 



^ 124 ^ 

Nights, O Suppers — too good to last! 
Nay, now also occurs another and Third 
scenic Exhibition, fitted by its radiance to 
dispel from Monseigneur's soul the last 
trace of care. 

Why the Queen does not, even yet, 
openly receive me at Court? Patience, 
Monseigneur! Thou little knowest those 
too intricate cabals; and how she still but 
works at them silently, with royal suppress- 
ed fury, like a royal lioness only delivering 
herself from the hunter's toils. Mean- 
while, is not thy work done? The Neck- 
lace, she rejoices over it; beholds, many 
times in secret, her Juno-neck mirrored 
back the lovelier for it, — as our tutelar 
Countess can testify. Come to-morrow to 
the CEil-de-Baeuf ; there see with eyes, in 
high noon, as already in deep midnight 
thou hast seen, whether in her royal heart 
there were delay. 

Let us stand, then, with Monseigneur, 
in that CEil-de-Boeuf; in the Versailles Pal- 



4f 125 ^ 
ace Gallery; for all well-dressed persons are 
admitted: there the Loveliest, in pomp of 
royalty, will walk to mass. The world is all 
in pelisses and winter furs ; cheerful, clear, — 
with noses tending to blue. A lively, many- 
voiced hum plays fitful, hither and thither: 
of sledge parties and Court parties; frosty 
state of the weather; stability of M. de Ca- 
lonne; Majesty's looks yesterday; — such 
hum as always, in these sacred Court-spaces, 
since Louis le Grand made and consecrated 
them, has, with more or less impetuosity, 
agitated our common Atmosphere. 

Ah, through that long high Gallery what 
Figures have passed — and vanished! Lou- 
vois, — with the Great King, flashing fire- 
glances on the fugitive; in his red right 
hand a pair of tongs, which pious Main- 
tenon hardly holds back ! Louvois, where 
art thou? Ye Marechaux de France^ Ye 
unmentionable-women of past generations? 
Here also was it that rolled and rushed 
the "sound, absolutely like thunder," of 



■^ 126 ^ 

Courtier hosts ; in that dark hour when the 
signal-light in Louis the Fifteenth's cham- 
ber-window was blown out; and his ghastly 
infectious Corpse lay alone, forsaken on its 
tumbled death-lair, "in the hands of some 
poor women " ; and the Courtier-hosts 
rushed from the Deep-fallen to hail the 
New-risen ! These too rushed, and passed ; 
and their "sound, absolutely like thunder," 
became silence. Figures? Men? They are 
fast-fleeting Shadows; fast chasing each 
other: it is not a Palace, but a Caravansera. 
— Monseigneur(with thy too much Tokay 
overnight)! cease puzzling: here thou art, 
this blessed February day: — the Peerless, 
will she turn lightly that high head of hers, 
and glance aside into the CEil-de-Bceuf^ in 
passing? Please Heaven, she will. To our 
tutelary Countess, at least, she promised it; 
though, alas, so fickle is womankind! — 

Hark! Clang of opening doors! She 
issues, like the Moon in silver brightness, 
down the Eastern steeps. La Reine vient! 



^ 127 4» 

What a figure ! I (with the aid of glasses) 
discern her. O Fairest, Peerless! Let the 
humofminor discoursing hush itself wholly; 
and only one successive rolling peal o^ Vive 
la Reine, like the movable radiance of a train 
of fireworks, irradiate her path. — Ye Im- 
mortals! She does, she beckons, turns her 
head this way! — "Does she not?" says 
Countess de Lamotte. — Versailles, the CEil- 
de-Bceufy and all men and things are drowned 
in a Sea of Light; Monseigneur and that 
high beckoning Head are alone, with each 
other in the Universe. 

O Eminence, what a beatific vision ! En- 
joy it, blest as the gods; ruminate and re- 
enjoy itjwith full soul : it is the last provided 
for thee. Too soon, in the course of these 
six months, shall thy beatific vision, like 
Mirza's vision, gradually melt away; and 
only oxen and sheep be grazing in its place ; 
— and thou, as a doomed Nebuchadnezzar, 
be grazing with them. 



<%t 128 -^ 

"Does she not?" said the Countess de 
Lamotte. That it is a habit of hers; that 
hardly a day passes without her doing it: 
this the Countess de Lamotte did not say. 




CHAPTER XIV 

THE NECKLACE CANNOT BE PAID 

HERE, then, the specially Dramaturgic 
labors of Countess de Lamotte may 
be said to terminate. The rest of her life is 
Histrionic merely, or Histrionic and Crit- 
ical ; as, indeed, what had all the former part 
of it been but a Hypocrisia^ a more or less 
correct Playing of Parts ? O " Mrs. Facing- 
both-ways *' (as old Bunyan said), what a 
talent hadst thou ! No Proteus ever took 
so many shapes, no Chameleon so often 
changed color. One thing thou wert to 
Monseigneur ; another thing to Cagliostro, 
and Villette of Rascaldom ; a third thing 
to the World, in printed " Memoires " ; a 
fourth thing to Philippe Egalite: all things 
to all men ! 

Let her, however, we say, but manage 
now to act her own parts, with proper His- 



-^ 130 ^ 

trionic illusion; and, by Critical glosses, 
give her past Dramaturgy the fit aspect, to 
Monseigneur and others: this henceforth, 
and not new Dramaturgy,includes herwhole 
task. Dramatic Scenes, in plenty, will fol- 
low of themselves; especially that Fourth 
and final Scene, spoken of above as by an- 
other Author, — by Destiny itself. 

For in the Lamotte Theatre, so different 
from our common Pasteboard one, the Play 
goes on, even when the Machinist has left 
it. Strange enough: those Air-images, which 
from her Magic-lantern she hung out on the 
empty bosom of Night, have clutched hold 
of this solid-seeming World (which some 
call the Material World, as if that made it 
more a Real one), and will tumble hither 
and thither the solidest masses there. Yes, 
reader, so goes it here below. What thou 
callestaBrain-web,ormereillusiveNothing, 
is it not a web of the Brain ; of the Spirit 
which inhabits the Brain ; and which, in this 
World (rather, as I think, to be named the 



<^ 131 ^ 

Spiritual one), very naturally moves and 
tumbles hither and thither all things it meets 
with, in Heaven or in Earth? — So, too, the 
Necklace, though we saw it vanish through 
the Horn Gate of Dreams, and in my 
opinion man shall never more behold it, — 
yet its activity ceases not, nor will. For no 
Act of a man, no Thing (how much less the 
man himself!) is extinguished when // dis- 
appears : through considerable times it still 
visibly works, though done and vanished; 
I have known a done thing work visibly 
Three Thousand Years and more: invisi- 
bly, unrecognised, all done things work 
through endless times and years. Such a 
Hypermagical is this our poor old Real 
world ; which some take upon them to pro- 
nounce effete, prosaic! Friend, it is thyself 
that art all withered up into effete Prose, 
dead as ashes: know this (I advise thee); 
and seek passionately, with a passion little 
short of desperation, to have it remedied. 
Meanwhile, what will the feeling heart 



^ 132 4- 

think to learn that Monseigneur de Rohan, 
as we prophesied, again experiences the fick- 
leness of a Court; that, notwithstanding 
the beatific visions, at noon and midnight, 
the Queen's Majesty, with the light ingrati- 
tude of her sex, flies off at a tangent; and, 
far from ousting his detested and detesting 
rival. Minister Breteuil, and openly delight- 
ing to honour Monseigneur, will hardly 
vouchsafe him a few gilt Autographs, and 
those few of the most capricious, suspicious, 
soul-confusing tenor ? What terrifico-absurd 
explosions, which scarcely Cagliostro,with 
CarafFe and four ca'ndles, can still; how 
many deep-weighed Humble Petitions, Ex- 
planations, Expostulations, penned with 
fervidest eloquence, with craftiest diplo- 
macy, — all delivered by our tutelar Coun- 
tess: in vain! — O Cardinal, with what a 
huge iron mace, like Guy of Warwick's, 
thou smitest Phantasms in two, which close 
again, take shape again ; and only thrashest 
the air ! 



^ 133 ^ 

One comfort, however,is that the Queen's 
Majesty has committed herself. The Rose 
of Trianon, and what may pertain thereto, 
lies it not here? That '■^ Right — Marie- 
Antoinette of France" too ; and the 30th 
of July, first-instalment-day, coming? She 
shall be brought to terms, good Eminence ! 
Order horses and beef-eaters for Saverne; 
there, ceasing all written or oral communi- 
cations, starve her into capitulating. It 
is the bright May month: his Eminence 
again somnambulates the Promenade de la 
Rose; but now with grim dry eyes; and, 
from time to time, terrifically stamping. 

But who is this that I see mounted on 
costliest horse and horse-gear ; betting at 
Newmarket Races ; though he can speak 
no English word, and only some Chevalier 
O'NIel, some Capuchin Macdermot, from 
Bar-sur-Aube, interprets his French into 
the dialect of the Sister Island ? Few days 
ago I observed him walking in Fleet-street, 
thoughtfully through Temple-Bar ; — in 



^ 134 ^ 

deep treaty with Jeweller Jeffreys, with 
Jeweller Grey, for the sale of Diamonds : 
such a lot as one may boast of A tall 
handsome man ; with ex-military whiskers ; 
with a look of troubled gayety, and rascal- 
ism : you think it is the Sieur self-styled 
Count de Lamotte ; nay, the man himself 
confesses it ! The Diamonds were a present 
to his Countess, — from the still-bountiful 
Queen. 

Villette, too, has he completed his sales 
at Amsterdam ? Him I shall by-and-by 
behold; not betting at Newmarket, but 
drinking wine and ardent spirits in the 
Taverns of Geneva. Ill-gotten wealth en- 
dures not; Rascaldom has no strong-box. 
Countess de Lamotte, for what a set of 
cormorant scoundrels hast thou laboured, 
art thou still labouring ! 

Still labouring, we may say : for as the 
fatal 30th of July approaches, what is to 
be looked for but universal Earthquake; 
Mud-explosion that will blot-out the face 



^ 135 ^ 

of Nature? Methinks, stood I in thy pat- 
tens, Dame de Lamotte, I would cut and 
run. — "Run!" exclaims she, with a toss 
of indignant astonishment : "Calumniated 
Innocence run ? " For it is singular how in 
some minds, which are mere bottomless 
"chaotic whirlpools of gilt shreds," there 
is no deliberate Lying whatever; and no- 
thing is either believed or disbelieved, but 
only (with some transient suitable Histri- 
onic emotion) spoken and heard. 

Had Dame de Lamotte a certain great- 
ness of character, then; at least, a strength 
of transcendent audacity, amounting to the 
bastard-heroic ? Great, indubitably great, 
is her Dramaturgic and Histrionic talent ; 
but as for the rest, one must answer, with 
reluctance. No. Mrs. Facing-both-ways is 
a "Spark of vehement Life," but the far- 
thest in the world from a brave woman ; she 
did not, in any case, show the bravery of a 
woman ; did, in many cases, show the mere 
screaming trepidation of one. Her grand 



^ 136 4- 

quality is rather to be reckoned negative; 
the " untamableness " as of a fly ; the " wax- 
cloth dress " from which so much ran down 
like water. Small sparrows, as I learn, have 
been trained to fire cannon ; but would 
make poor Artillery Officers in a Water- 
loo. Thou dost not call that Cork a strong 
swimmer? Which nevertheless shoots,with- 
out hurt, the Falls of Niagara; defies the 
thunderbolt itself to sink it, for more than 
a moment. Without intellect, imagination, 
power of attention, or any spiritual faculty, 
how brave were one, — with fit motive for 
it, such as hunger ! How much might one 
dare, by the simplest of methods, by not 
thinking of it, not knowing it ! — Besides, 
is not Cagliostro, foolish blustering Quack, 
still here ? No scapegoat had ever broader 
back. The Cardinal, too, has he not money ? 
Queen's Majesty, even in effigy, shall not 
be insulted ; the Soubises, De Marsans, and 
high and puissant Cousins, must huddle 
the matter up : Calumniated Innocence, in 



^ 137 ^ 
the most universal of Earthquakes, will 
find some crevice to whisk through, as she 
has so often done. 

But all this while how fares it with his 
Eminence, left somnambulating the Prome- 
nade de la Rose ; and at times truculently 
stamping? Alas, ill, and ever worse. The 
starving method, singular as it may seem, 
brings no capitulation ; brings only, after 
a month's waiting, our tutelary Countess, 
with a gilt Autograph, indeed, and "all 
wrapt in silk threads, sealed where they 
cross," — but which we read with curses. 

We must back again to Paris ; there pen 
new Expostulations ; which our unwearied 
Countess will take charge of, but, alas, can 
get no answer to. However, is not the 30th 
of July coming? — Behold, on the 19th of 
that month, the shortest, most careless of 
Autographs: with some fifteen hundred 
pounds of real money in it, to pay the — 
interest of the first instalment; the princi- 
pal, of some thirty thousand, not being at 



^ 138 ^ 

the moment perfectly convenient! Hungry 
Boehmer makes large eyes at this pro- 
posal ; will accept the money, but only as 
part of payment ; the man is positive : a 
Court of Justice, if no other means, shall 
get him the remainder. What now is to 
be done ? 

Farmer-general Monsieur Saint-James, 
Cagliostro's disciple, and wet with Tokay, 
will cheerfully advance the sum needed — 
for her Majesty's sake ; thinks, however 
(with all his Tokay), it were good to 
speak with her Majesty first. — I observe, 
meanwhile, the distracted hungry Boehmer 
driven hither and thither, not by his fixed- 
idea; alas, no, but by the far more fright- 
ful ghost thereof, — since no payment is 
forthcoming. He stands, one day, speaking 
with a Queen's waiting-woman (Madame 
Campan herself), in "a thunder-shower, 
which neither of them notice," — so thun- 
derstruck are they. What weather-symp- 
toms for his Eminence ! 



4f 139 ^ 

The 30th of July has come, but no money ; 
the 30th is gone, but no money. O Emi- 
nence, what a grim farewell of July is this 
of 1785 ! The last July went out with airs 
from Heaven, and Trianon Roses. These 
August days, are they not worse than dog's 
days; worthy to be blotted out from all Al- 
manacs ? Boehmer and Bassange thou canst 
still see ; but only " return from them swear- 
ing." Nay, what new misery is this? Our 
tutelary Histrionic Countess enters, distrac- 
tion in her eyes ; she has just been at Ver- 
sailles ; the Queen's Majesty, with a levity 
of caprice which we dare not trust ourselves 
to characterise, declares plainly that she 
will deny ever having got the Necklace; 
ever having had, with his Eminence, any 
transaction whatsoever! — Mud-explosion 
without parallel in volcanic annals. — The 
Palais de Strasbourg appears to be beset 
with spies ; the Lamottes, for the Count, 
too, is here, are packing-up for Bar-sur- 
Aube. The Sieur Boehmer, has he fallen 



■^ 140 4- 
insane ? Or into communication with Min- 
ister Breteuil ? — 

And so, distractedly and distractively, to 
the sound of all Discords in Nature, opens 
that Fourth, final Scenic Exhibition, com- 
posed by Destiny. 




CHAPTER XV 

SCENE FOURTH : BY DESTINY 

T is Assumption-day, the fifteenth of 
August. Don thy pontificalia, Grand- 
Almoner ; crush down these hideous tem- 
poralities out of sight. In any case, smooth 
thy countenance into some sort of lofty- 
dissolute serene : thou hast a thing they 
call worshipping God to enact, thyself the 
first actor. 

The Grand-Almoner has done it. He is 
in Versailles CEil-de-Bceuf Gallery ; where 
male and female Peerage, and all Noble 
France in gala various and glorious as the 
rainbow, waits only the signal to begin 
worshipping: on the serene of his lofty- 
dissolute countenance there can nothing 
be read. By Heaven ! he is sent for to the 
Royal Apartment ! 

He returns with the old lofty-dissolute 



^ 142 ^ 
look, inscrutably serene : has his turn for 
favour actually come, then? Those fifteen 
long years of soul's travail are to be re- 
warded by a birth ? — Monsieur le Baron de 
Breteuil issues; great in his pride of place, 
in this the crowning moment of his life. 
With one radiant glance, Breteuil summons 
the Officer on Guard ; with another, fixes 
Monseigneur : '■'' De par le Roi^Monseigneur: 
you are arrested! At your risk, Officer!" 

— Curtains as of pitch-black whirlwind 
envelop Monseigneur; whirl off with him, 

— to outer darkness. Versailles Gallery ex- 
plodes aghast; as if Guy Fawkes's Plot had 
burst under it. " The Queen's Majesty was 
weeping," whisper some. There will be no 
Assumption-service ; or such a one as was 
never celebrated since Assumption came in 
fashion. 

Europe, then, shall ring with it from side 
to side ! — But why rides that Heyduc as if 
all the Devils drove him ? It is Monsei- 



^ 143 ^ 

gneur's Heyduc : Monseigneur spoke three 
words in German to him, at the door of his 
Versailles Hotel; even handed him a slip 
of writing, which, with borrowed Pencil, 
"in his red square cap," he had managed 
to prepare on the way thither. To Paris ! 
To the Palais-Cardinal ! The horse dies on 
reaching the stable; the Heyduc swoons on 
reaching the cabinet : but his slip of writing 
fell from his hand ; and I (says the Abbe 
Georgel) was there. The red Portfolio, con- 
taining all the gilt Autographs, is burnt 
utterly, with much else, before Breteuil can 
arrive for apposition of the seals ! — Where- 
by Europe, in ringing from side to side, 
must worry itself with guessing : and at this 
hour, on this paper, sees the matter in such 
an interesting clear-obscure. 

Soon Count Cagliostro and his Seraphic 
Countess go to join Monseigneur, in State 
Prison. In few days, follows Dame de La- 
motte, from Bar-sur-Aube ; Demoiselle 
d'Oliva by-and-by, from Brussels; Villette- 



^ 144 ^ 

de-Retaux, from his Swiss retirement, in the 
taverns of Geneva. The Bastille opens its 
iron bosom to them all. 




CHAPTER LAST 

MISSA EST 

THUS, then, the Diamond Necklace 
having, on the one hand, vanished 
through the Horn Gate of Dreams, and so, 
under the pincers of Nisus Lamotte and 
Euryalus Villette, lost its sublunary individ- 
uality and being ; and, on the other hand, 
all that trafficked in it, sitting now safe un- 
der lock and key, that justice may take cog- 
nisance of them, — our engagement in regard 
to the matter is on the point of terminat- 
ing. That extraordinary " Proces du Collier y 
Necklace Trial," spinning itself through 
Nine other ever-memorable Months, to the 
astonishment of the hundred and eighty- 
seven assembled ParlementierSy and of 
all Quidnuncs, Journalists, Anecdotists, 
Satirists, in both Hemispheres, is, in every 
sense, a " Celebrated Trial," and belongs 



^ 146 4» 

to Publishers of such. How, by innumer- 
able confrontations, and expiscatory ques- 
tions, through entanglements, doublings 
and windings that fatigue eye and soul, this 
most involute of Lies is finally winded off 
to the scandalous-ridiculous cinder-heart 
of it, let others relate. 

Meanwhile, during these Nine ever- 
memorable Months, till they terminate late 
at night precisely with the May of 1786, 
how many fugitive leaves, quizzical, imagi- 
native, or at least mendacious, were flying 
about in Newspapers; or stitched together 
as Pamphlets ; and what heaps of others 
were left creeping in Manuscript, we shall 
not say ; — having, indeed, no complete Col- 
lection of them, and what is more to the 
purpose, little to do with such Collection. 
Nevertheless, searching for some fit Capital 
of the composite order, to adorn adequate- 
ly the now finished singular Pillar of our 
Narrative, what can suit us better than the 
following, so far as we know, yet unedited. 



^ 147 ^ 

Occasional Discourse^ by Count Alessandro 
CagliostrOy 1'haumaturgist, Prophet and 
Arch-^ack; delivered in the Bastille: 
Tear of Lucifer^ 57^9 >' of the Mahometan 
Hegira from Mecca^ 1201 ; of the Cagli- 
ostric Hegira from Palermo^ 24 ; of the 
Vulgar Era^ 1785. 

*^ Fellow Scoundrels^ — An unspeakable 
Intrigue, spun from the soul of that Circe- 
Megasra, by our voluntary or involuntary 
help, has assembled us all, if not under one 
roof-tree, yet within one grim iron-bound 
ring-wall. For an appointed number of 
months, in the ever-rolling flow of Time, 
we, being gathered from the four winds, 
did by Destiny work together in body cor- 
porate; and joint laborers in a Transaction 
already famed over the Globe, obtain unity 
of Name, like the Argonauts of old, as Con- 
querors of the Diamond Necklace. Erelong it 
is done (for ring-walls hold not captive the 
free Scoundrel forever); and we disperse 



^ 148 ^ 

again, over wide terrestrial Space; some 
of us, it may be, over the very marches of 
Space. Our Act hangs indissoluble together; 
floats wondrous in the older and older 
memory of men: while we the little band 
of Scoundrels, who saw each other, now 
hover so far asunder, to see each other no 
more, if not once more only on the uni- 
versal Doomsday, the Last of the Days ! 

" In such interesting moments, while we 
stand within the verge of parting, and have 
not yet parted, methinks it were well here, 
in these sequestered Spaces, to institute a 
few general reflections. Me, as a public 
speaker, the Spirit of Masonry, of Philo- 
sophy, and Philanthropy, and even of pro- 
phecy, blowing mysterious from the Land 
of Dreams, impels to do it. Give ear, O Fel- 
low Scoundrels, to what the Spirit utters; 
treasure it in your hearts, practise it in your 
lives. 

" Sitting here, penned-up in this which, 
with a slight metaphor, I call the Central 



4t 149 ^ 
Cloaca of Nature, where a tyrannical De 
Launay can forbid the bodily eye free vision, 
you with the mental eye see but the bet- 
ter. This Central Cloaca, is it not rather a 
Heartjinto which, from all regions, mysteri- 
ous conduits introduce and forcibly inject 
whatsoever is choicest in the scoundrehsm 
of the Earth ; there to be absorbed, or 
again (by the other auricle) ejected into 
new circulation ? Let the eye of the mind 
run along this immeasurable venous-arterial 
system ; and astound itself with the magni- 
ficent extent of Scoundreldom ; the deep, 
I may say, unfathomable, significance of 
Scoundrelism. 

"Yes, brethren, wide as the sun's range 
is our Empire, wider than old Rome's in 
its palmiest era. I have in my time been 
far; in frozen Muscovy, in hot Calabria, 
east, west, wheresoever the sky overarches 
civilized man : and never hitherto saw I my- 
self an alien; out of Scoundreldom I never 
was. Is it not even said, from of old, by 



^ 150 ^ 

the opposite party: ^ All men are liars'? 
Do they not (and this nowise * in haste ') 
whimperingly talk of 'one just person' (as 
they call him), and of the remaining thou- 
sand save one that take part with us? So 
decided is our majority." — (Applause.) 

"Of the Scarlet Woman, — yes, Mon- 
seigneur, without offence, — of the Scarlet 
Woman that sits on Seven Hills, and her 
Black Jesuit Mintia,out foraging from Pole 
to Pole, I speak not; for the story is too 
trite : nay, the Militia itself, as I see, begins 
to be disbanded, and invalided, for a sec- 
ond treachery; treachery to herself! Nor 
yet of Governments ; for a like reason. 
Ambassadors, said an English punster, lie 
abroad for their masters. Their masters, we 
answer, lie at home for themselves. Not of 
all this, nor of Courtship with its Lovers'- 
vows, nor Courtiership, nor Attorneyism, 
nor Public Oratory, and Selling by Auction, 
do I speak : I simply ask the gainsayer, 
Which is the particular trade, profession, 



<%t 151 ^ 

mystery, calling, or pursuit of the Sons of 
Adam that they successfully manage in the 
other way? He cannot answer! — No: 
Philosophy itself, both practical and even 
speculative, has at length, after shameful- 
lest groping, stumbled on the plain conclu- 
sion that Sham is indispensable to Reality, 
as Lying to Living; that without Lying the 
whole business of the world, from swaying 
of senates to selling of tapes, must explode 
into anarchic discords, and so a speedy con- 
clusion ensue. 

" But the grand problem, Fellow Scoun- 
drels, as you well know, is the marrying of 
Truth and Sham ; so that they become one 
flesh, man and wife, and generate these 
three : Profit, Pudding, and Respectability 
that always keeps her Gig. Wondrously, in- 
deed, do Truth and Delusion play into one 
another; Reality rests on Dream. Truth 
is but the skin of the bottomless Untrue : 
and ever, from time to time, the Untrue 
sheds it; is clear again; and the superan- 



4f 152 4- 
nuated True itself becomes a Fable. Thus 
do all hostile things crumble back into 
our Empire ; and of its increase there is 
no end. 

" O brothers, to think of the Speech with- 
out meaning (which is mostly ours), and 
of the Speech with contrary meaning (which 
is wholly ours), manufactured by the organs 
of Mankind in one solar day ! Or call it 
a day of Jubilee, when public Dinners are 
given, and Dinner-orations are delivered : 
or say, a Neighbouring Island in time of 
General Election! O ye immortal gods! 
The mind is lost ; can only admire great 
Nature's plenteousness with a kind of sa- 
cred wonder. 

" For tell me, what is the chief end of 
man ? * To glorify God,' said the old Chris- 
tian Sect, now happily extinct. ' To eat and 
find eatables by the readiest method,' an- 
swers sound Philosophy, discarding whims. 
If the method readier than this of persua- 
sive-attraction is yet discovered, — point it 



^ 153 ^ 
out! — Brethren, I said the old Christian 
Sect was happily extinct: as, indeed,inRome 
itself, there goes the wonderfullest tradi- 
tionary Prophecy, of that Nazareth Christ 
coming back, and being crucified a second 
time there; which truly I see not in the least 
how he could fail to be. Nevertheless, that 
old Christian whim, of an actual living and 
ruling God, and some sacred covenant bind- 
ing all men in Him, with much other mystic 
stuff, does, under new or old shape, linger 
with a few. From these few keep yourselves 
forever far ! They must even be left to 
their whim, which is not like to prove in- 
fectious. 

" But neither are we, my Fellow Scoun- 
drels, without our Religion, our Worship ; 
which, like the oldest, and all true Wor- 
ships, is one of Fear. The Christians have 
their Cross, the Moslem their Crescent : but 
have not we too our — Gallows? Yts^ infin- 
itely terrible is the Gallows ; it bestrides with 
its patibulary fork the Pit of bottomless 



4^ ISA- ^ 
Terror. No Manicheans are we ; our God 
is One. Great, exceeding great, I say, is 
the Gallows; of old, even from the begin- 
ning, in this world; knowing neither vari- 
ableness nor decadence; forever, forever, 
over the wreck of ages, and all civic and 
ecclesiastic convulsions, meal-mobs, revo- 
lutions, the Gallows with front serenely ter- 
rible towers aloft. Fellow Scoundrels, fear 
the Gallows and have no other fear 1 Tbis 
is the Law and the Prophets. Fear every 
emanation of the Gallows. And what is 
every buffet, with the fist, or even with the 
tongue, of one having authority, but some 
such emanation? And what is Force of 
Public Opinion but the infinitude of such 
emanations, — rushing combined on you, 
like a mighty storm-wind? Fear the Gal- 
lows, I say ! O when, with its long black 
arm, it has clutched a man, what avail him 
all terrestrial things ? These pass away, with 
horrid nameless dinning in his ears ; and the 
ill-starred Scoundrel pendulates between 



^ 155 ^ 

Heaven and Earth, a thing rejected of 
bothy — (Profound sensation.) 

"Such, so wide in compass, high, gal- 
lows-high in dignity, is the Scoundrel Em- 
pire; and for depth, it is deeper than the 
Foundations of the World. For what was 
Creation itself wholly, according to the 
best Philosophers, but a Divulsion by the 
Time-Spirit (or Devil so called); a forceful 
Interruption, or breaking asunder, of the 
old Quiescence of Eternity ? It was Lucifer 
that fell, and made this lordly World arise. 
Deep? It is bottomless-deep; the very 
Thought, diving, bobs up from it baffled. 
Is not this that they call Vice of Lying the 
Adam-Kadmon^ or primeval Rude-Element, 
old as Chaos mother's-womb of Death and 
Hell; whereon their thin film of Virtue, 
Truth and the like, poorly wavers — for a 
day ? All Virtue, what is it, even by their own 
showing, but Vice transformed, — that is, 
manufactured, rendered artificial? 'Man's 
Vices are the roots from which his Virtues 



^ 156 ^ 

grow out and see the light,* says one: 
*Yes/ add I, *and thanklessly steal their 
nourishment!' Were it not for the nine 
hundred ninety and nine unacknowledged, 
perhaps martyred and calumniated Scoun- 
drels, how were their single Just Person 
(with a murrain on him!) so much as pos- 
sible? — Oh, it is high, high: these things 
are too great for me; Intellect, Imagina- 
tion, flags her tired wings; the soul lost, 
baffled—" 

— Here Dame de Lamotte tittered audi- 
bly, and muttered Coq-d'Inde, which, being 
interpreted into the Scottish tongue, signi- 
fies Buhbly-Jockl The Arch-Quack, whose 
eyes were turned inwards as in rapt contem- 
plation, started at the titter and mutter : his 
eyes flashed outwards with dilated pupil; 
his nostrils opened wide; his very hair 
seemed to stir in its long twisted pigtails 
(his fashion of curl); and as Indignation 
is said to make Poetry, It here made Pro- 
phecy, or what sounded as such. With ter- 



4^ 157 ^ 
rible, working features, and gesticulation 
not recommended in any Book of Ges- 
ture, the Arch-Quack, in voice supernally 
discordant, like Lions worrying Bulls of 
Bashan, began: — 

" Sniff not. Dame de Lamotte; tremble, 
thou foul Circe- Megasra; thy day of deso- 
lation is at hand ! Behold ye the Sanhedrim 
of Judges, with their fanners of written 
Parchment, loud-rustling, as they winnow 
all her chaff and down-plumage, and she 
stands there naked and mean? — Villette, 
Oliva, do j^ blab secrets? Ye have no pity 
of her extreme need ; she none of yours. 
Is thy light-giggling, untamable heart at 
last heavy ? Hark ye ! Shrieks of one cast 
out; whom they brand on both shoulders 
with iron stamp; the red-hot *V,* thou Vo- 
leuse, hath it entered thy soul? Weep, Circe 
de Lamotte; wail there in truckle-bed, 
and hysterically gnash thy teeth: nay, do, 
smother thyself in thy door-mat coverHd; 
thou hast found thy mates; thou art in the 



^ 158 ^ 

Salpetriere ! — Weep, daughter of the high 
and puissant Sans-inexpressibles ! Buzz of 
Parisian Gossipry is about thee; but not to 
help thee : no, to eat before thy time. What 
shall a King's Court do with thee, thou un- 
clean thing, while thou yet livest? Escape! 
Flee to utmost countries, hide there, if thou 
canst, thy mark of Cain ! — In the Babylon 
of Fogland! Ha! is that my London? See 
I Judas Iscariot Egalite? Print, yea, print 
abundantly the abominations of your two 
hearts : breath of rattlesnakes can bedim the 
steel mirror, but only for a time. — And 
there! Aye, there at last! Tumblest thou 
from the lofty leads, poverty-stricken, O 
thriftless daughter of the high and puissant, 
escaping bailiffs? Descendest thou precipi- 
tate, in dead night, from window in the 
third story; hurled forth by Bacchanals, to 
whom thy shrill tongue had grown unbear- 
able? Yea, through the smoke of that new 
Babylon thou fallest headlong; one long 
scream of screams makes night hideous; 



4t 159 ^ 
thou liest there, shattered like addle egg, 
* nigh to the Temple of Flora ! ' O Lamotte, 
has thy Hypocrisia ended, then ? Thy many 
characters were all acted. Here at last thou 
actest not, but art what thou seemest: a 
mangled squelch of gore, confusion, and 
abomination; which men huddle under- 
ground, with no burial-stone. Thou gal- 
lows-carrion ! — " 

— Here the prophet turned up his nose 
(the broadest of the eighteenth century), 
and opened wide his nostrils with such a 
greatness of disgust, that all the audience, 
even Lamotte herself, sympathetically imi- 
tated him. — "O Dame de Lamotte! Dame 
de Lamotte! Now, when the circle of thy 
existence lies complete; and my eye glances 
over these twoscore and three years that 
were lent thee, to do evil as thou couldst; 
and I behold thee a bright-eyed little Tat- 
terdemalion, begging and gathering sticks 
in the Bois de Boulogne ; and also at length 
a squelched Putrefaction, here on London 



■^ i6o ^ 

pavements; with the head-dressings and 
hungerings, the gaddings and hysterical 
gigglings that came between, — what shall 
I say was the meaning of thee at all? — 

"Villette-de-Retaux ! Have the catch- 
poles trepanned thee, by sham of battle, in 
thy Tavern, from the sacred Republican 
soil? It is thou that wert the hired Forger 
of Handwritings? Thou wilt confess it? 
Depart, unwhipt yet accursed. — Ha ! The 
dread Symbol of our Faith? Swings aloft, 
on the Castle of Saint Angelo, a Pendulous 
Mass, which I think I discern to be the 
body of Villette! There let him end; the 
sweet morsel of our Juggernaut. 

" Nay, weep not thou, disconsolate Oliva; 
blear not thy bright blue eyes, daughter of 
the shady Garden! Thee shall the Sanhe- 
drim not harm : this Cloaca of Nature emits 
thee; as notablest of unfortunate-females, 
thou shalt have choice of husbands not 
without capital; and accept one. Know this; 
for the vision of it is true. 



^ i6i ^§» 

" But the Anointed Majesty whom ye 
profaned ? Blow, spirit of Egyptian Ma- 
sonry, blow aside the thick curtains of 
Space ! Lo you, her eyes are red with their 
first tears of pure bitterness; not with their 
last. Tire-woman Campan is choosing, from 
the Print-shops of the Quais, the reputed- 
best among the hundred hkenesses of Circe 
de Lamotte: a Queen shall consider if the 
basest of women ever, by any accident, dark- 
ened daylight or candlelight for the highest. 
The Portrait answers : Never!" — (Sensa- 
tion in the audience.) 

" — Ha! What is //^/j.? Angels, Uriel, 
Anachiel, and ye other five; Pentagon of 
Rejuvenescence; Power that destroyedst 
Original Sin; Earth, Heaven, and thou 
Outer Limbo which men name Hell ! Does 
the Empire of Imposture waver? Burst 
there, in starry sheen, updarting. Light-rays 
from out its dark foundations ; as it rocks 
and heaves, not in travail-throes, but in 
death-throes? Yea, Light-rays, piercing. 



4t 162 ^ 
clear, that salute the Heavens, — lo, they 
kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as 
red Hell-fire! Imposture is in flames. Im- 
posture is burnt up: one Red-Sea of Fire, 
wild-billowing enwraps the World ; with its 
fire-tongue licks at the very stars. Thrones 
are hurled into it, and Dubois Mitres, and 
Prebendal Stalls that drop fatness, and — 
ha ! what see I ? — all the Gigs of Creation : 
all, all! Woe is me! Never since Pharaoh's 
Chariots, in the Red-Sea pf water, was there 
wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this in the sea 
of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall 
they wander in the wind. 

" Higher, higher yet flames the Fire-Sea ; 
crackling with new dislocated timber; hiss- 
ing with leather and prunella. The metal 
Images are molten; the marble Images be- 
come mortar-lime; the stone Mountains 
sulkily explode. Respectability, with all 
her collected Gigs inflamed for funeral pyre, 
wailing, leaves the Earth : not to return save 
under new Avatar. Imposture, how it burns, 



4t 163 ^ 
through generations: how it is burnt up — 
for a time. The World is black ashes ; which, 
ah, when will they grow green ? The Images 
all run into amorphous Corinthian brass ; 
all Dwellings of men destroyed; the very 
mountains peeled and riven, the valleys 
black and dead : it is an empty World ! Woe 

to them that shall be born then! A 

King, a Queen (ah me!) were hurled in; 
did rustle once; flew aloft, crackling, like 
paper-scroll. Oliva's Husband was hurled 
in ; Iscariot Egalite; thou grim De Launay, 
with thy grim Bastille ; whole kindreds and 
peoples; five millions of mutually destroy- 
ing Men. For it is the End of the Domin- 
ion of Imposture (which is Darkness and 
opaqueFiredamp); and the burning-up, with 
unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are 
in the Earth ! " — Here the Prophet paused, 
fetching a deep sigh ; and the Cardinal 
uttered a kind of faint, tremulous Hem ! 

"Mourn not, O Monseigneur, spite of 
thy nephritic colic and many infirmities. 



"^ 164 ^ 
For thee mercifully it was not unto death. 
O Monseigneur (for thou hadst a touch 
of goodness), who would not weep over 
thee, if he also laughed ? Behold ! The not 
too judicious Historian, that long years 
hence, amid remotest wildernesses, writes 
thy life, and names thee Mud-volcano; 
even he shall reflect that it was thy Life, 
this same; thy only chance through whole 
Eternity; which thou (poor gambler) hast 
expended jo; and, even over his hard heart, 
a breath of dewy pity for thee shall blow. 
— O Monseigneur, thou wert not all ig- 
noble: thy Mud-volcano was but strength 
dislocated, fire misapplied. Thou wentest 
ravening through the world ; no Life-elixir 
or Stone of the Wise could we two (for 
want of funds) discover: a foulest Circe 
undertook to fatten thee; and thou hadst 
to fill thy belly with the east wind. And 
burst? By the Masonry of Enoch, No! Be- 
hold, has not thy Jesuit Familiar his Scouts 
dim-flying over the deep of human things? 



^ 165 ^ 

Cleared art thou of crime, save that of fixed- 
idea; weepest, a repentant exile, in the 
Mountains of Auvergne. Neither shall the 
Red Fire-Sea itself consume thee; only 
consume thy Gig, and, instead of Gig (O 
rich exchange !), restore thy Self. Safe be- 
yondtheRhine-stream, thou livest peaceful 
days ; savest many from the fire, and anoint- 
est their smarting burns. Sleep finally, in 
thy mother's bosom, in a good old age!" 
— The Cardinal gave a sort of guttural 
murmur, or gurgle, which ended in a long 
sigh. 

" O Horrors, as ye shall be called," again 
burst forth the Quack, " why have ye missed 
the Sieur de Lamotte ; why not of him, too, 
made gallows-carrion ? Will spear, or sword- 
stick, thrust at him (or supposed to be 
thrust), through window of hackney-coach, 
in Piccadilly of the Babylon of Fog, where 
he jolts disconsolate, not let out the im- 
prisoned animal existence? Is he poisoned, 
too ? Poison will not kill the Sieur Lamotte ; 



^ i66 ^ 

nor steel, nor massacres. Let him drag his 
utterly superfluous life to a second and a 
third generation ; and even admit the not too 
judicious Historian to see his face before he 
die. 

" But, ha ! " cried he, and stood wide- 
staring, horror-struck, as if some Cribb's fist 
had knocked the wind out of him : " O hor- 
ror of horrors ! IsitnotMyselflsee? Roman 
Inquisition! Long months of cruel baiting! 
Life of Giuseppe Balsamo ! Cagliostro's Body 
still lying in St. Leo Castle, his ♦S'^^fled — 
whither? Bystanders wag their heads, and 
say : * The Brow of Brass, behold how it has 
got all unlacquered; these Pinchbeck lips 
can lie no more!'Eheu! Ohoo!" — And he 
burst into unstanchable blubbering of tears ; 
and sobbing out the moanfullest broken 
howl, sank down in swoon ; to be put to bed 
by De Launay and others. 

Thus spoke (orthus might have spoken), 
and prophesied, the Arch-Quack Caglios- 
tro : and truly much better than he ever else 



^ 167 ^ 

did : for not a jot or tittle of it (save only that 
of our promised Interview with Nestor de 
Lamotte, which looks unlikelier than ever, 
forwe have not heard of him, dead or living, 
since 1826) — but has turned out to be lit- 
erally Irue. As, indeed, in all this History, 
one jot or tittle of untruth, that we could 
render true, is perhaps not discoverable; 
much as the distrustful reader may have 
disbelieved. 

Here, then, our little labour ends. The 
Necklace was, and is no more: the stones 
of it again " circulate in commerce," some of 
them perhaps in Rundle's at this hour; and 
may give rise to what other Histories we 
know not. The Conquerors of it, every one 
that trafficked in it, have they not all had 
their due, which was Death? 

This little Business, like a little cloud, 
bodied itself forth in skies clear to the un- 
observant: but with such hues of deep- 
tinted villainy, dissoluteness and general 



^ i68 ^ 

delirium as, to the observant, betokened 
it electric; and wise men, a Goethe, for ex- 
ample, boded Earthquakes. Has not the 
Earthquake come? 



THE END 



Four hundred numbered copies printed at 

The '^Riverside Tress^ Cambridge 

in October^ ^9^3 



